


The Guardian of Courage

by LordofLies



Category: Guardians of Childhood - William Joyce, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Angst, Book Spoilers, Canon - Book & Movie Combination, Canonical Character Death, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Memories, Memory Loss, Redemption, Sequel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2013-07-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 23:52:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 28,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/603443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LordofLies/pseuds/LordofLies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We measure the strength of our courage against the weight of our fears.  Those who do not know fear do not know bravery.  Those that know fear understand that strength cannot exist without a force to push against.</p><p>A year after Pitch’s bid for power, Jack finds his sleep plagued by terrible nightmares.  In his search for answers, he uncovers questions.  Just who is Pitch Black?  Where did he come from, and who was he before he became the Boogieman?  His curiosity leads him on a quest for redemption—to bring Pitch back into the light, and convince him to become a guardian.  But to play games with shadows is a dangerous business, and Jack will find himself drawn into the remnants of a war that never really ended.  Pitch Black is more than he appears, and having sympathy for the devil could lead far more easily into corruption than redemption.  </p><p>But laughter is a form of courage for those in dark places.  And laughter?  Jack has that in spades.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Nightmares

The first thaw of spring always made Jack feel like he was dying.

The sensation was not a full death, but more of a creeping dread that slowly stifled all the joy inside him.  It was a sense of something beautiful and vital ending far too soon.  The spring meant no more snowball fights, no more cold days, no more howling winds and soaring over frozen lakes, no more painting windows with frost or icing streets and cars and telephone wires.  No more calling snow down from the sky like it was what he was born to do.  (Wasn’t he, in a sense, reborn for this?)

Spring meant no more sledding adventures and near-accidents.  No more cold, red hands to warm by the fire after a day of trekking through the glittering winter woods.  No more cloudless, crisp night skies twinkling with the flames of a billion far-off stars.  No more children laughing steam.  No more landscapes clean and white and cold as marble.  No more need for Jack Frost when the long, cold, dark between Christmas and Easter had come to a close.

For the first time since he had blown back into the temperate climes (October this year, earlier than usual) Jack could feel a tug of fear—like fishhook in his frozen heart—dragging him down.  After three hundred years of loneliness, it still felt surreal to be seen and heard.  The fear that all of the friends he’d made might vanish like a wistful dream was still far too present in his mind.

It had only been a year since his initiation ceremony.  North had told him it would take time.  Just because he was a guardian now—just because he’d found his centre—didn’t mean that he knew exactly what he was doing.  Learning and growing is a process that never stops, even for immortals such as them.  Despite knowing that, Jack couldn’t entirely squash the fear that he would suddenly wake up to find that all of this was a dream.  The happy illusion would shatter, and he would still be Jack the Wandering Nuisance, Jack the Irresponsible, Jack the Worthless, Jack the Forgotten and Invisible.

These insecurities drew him further into himself as the snow melted from rooftops and the ice broke and slid down gutters in dejected chunks to melt on driveways and roadsides into gritty, salty paste.  He could see the images he’d recovered a year ago playing over and over in his mind.  When that light had first shone in his eyes, it had given him courage.  Now, for some reason, it made him afraid.  It was a strange thing, this memory.

He wasn’t entirely sure if the Jack that saved his sister from the ice—that fell down into the water and died alone in the cold and dark—was him.  Maybe it had been, once, a very long time ago.  Maybe he’d been that Jack when the Moon had first pulled him from his ice-locked tomb, but three hundred years of loneliness and a life half-lived had taken its toll in a thousand small and often hidden ways.

It was strange, so strange, to suddenly remember something forgotten long-ago.  Human Jack had been barely eighteen when he died.  Jack Frost had lived for three centuries never knowing all of the wonder, all of the feeling, all of the friendship and love and fun that had been felt and known in those eighteen short years.  Those memories were too sweet and warm.  They did not feel like _his_.  They were the remnants of another life, muffled and blurred, only seen and felt from far away.  ( _Then why,_ why _did the look in her eyes hurt so much as he fell?  Why did the water filling his lungs burn so hotly?  If they were not the same anymore, then why was that boy’s fear so very sharp?_ )  It was _real_ , no matter how distant it felt, and maybe that’s what scared him most.

What he had done in that short life was the reason he had been given a new life and purpose as Jack Frost.  Still, he could not help doubting that purpose from time to time.  When winter passed, the doubt that he could make it as a guardian—that he could last and be remembered—was strongest.  People cheered the warmer air, glad to feel winter whistling away behind them, and Jack couldn’t help but feel that as they cheered for winter’s end, they also cheered for his.  The warm made him sad and tired.  In the spring he slept, as he rarely did in the winter time, and when Jack slept he dreamed—dreams which, these days, were rarely pleasant.  Often, they were nightmares. 

Jack woke for the fifth night in row, gasping for air and thrashing against intangible lake water as the snow dripped off the branches around him with a soft _plop, plop_ sound.  Struggling to calm himself, he tightened his fist around his staff and struck the tree he had been sleeping in.  Shoots of silver bloomed up and down the trunk where it had been struck—as delicate and beautiful as any flower.  Jack sighed, wiping the frozen evidence of his nightly terrors from his face.  As he made to settle back down, a dark thought crept into his mind.

Nightmares were Pitch’s domain, but they had beaten Pitch.  He’d seen the Boogieman dragged down into that twisted horror house of a kingdom by his own creations, and while he knew Pitch was still around, he didn’t think that he’d risk provoking any of the guardians again so soon.  There was a very slim possibility that Pitch was involved with his recent nightmares and insecurities—as slim as a sliver of the moon before the dark night of the month—but it was still there, and that possibility was enough to worry the young guardian into action.

It was time to go talk to someone.

 

Now that Jack was a guardian, he could come and go as he pleased in the other guardians’ domains.  (Well, maybe not as he pleased, but he wasn’t kicked out on sight any more.)  Easter wasn’t far off, so he knew that Bunny would be grumpier than usual.  Besides, he didn’t offer the most helpful existential advice.  Tooth was nice enough, but most of the time she was so distracted that Jack couldn’t keep her attention long enough to actually hold a conversation.  Sandy was good company, but getting advice out of him involved interpreting his dream sand charades, and frankly Jack was feeling frustrated enough as it was.  North seemed the best option, he reasoned, as the North Wind blew him to the Pole.

“Jack Frost!” North boomed, clapping Jack on the back as he lighted down in the workshop, accompanied by a flurry of snowflakes.

“Oof!  Hey, North,” Jack coughed, cracking his back as the older guardian beckoned a gaggle of elves toward them.  Jack looked down to see that they were carrying a platter of Christmas cookies over their heads.

“Cookie?” North asked, eyeing Jack expectantly.

“Err…”  He peered down at them as they bumped the platter against his shin, chattering excitedly.  “I think I’ll pass.”

“Ah,” North nodded, as if Jack’s lack of desire for cookies explained everything.  “I see.  Come!  Walk with me.”  Jack let himself be led away as North’s massive hand steered him down the hall and around the great mosaic globe of the Earth.  The continents sparkled and shone with the light of children’s belief, and the sight of it lifted some of the heaviness in Jack’s heart.  He was doing good.  He was loved and wanted.  What was he feeling sad for?  What was he so afraid of?

“What is troubling you, Jack?” North asked, his gruff voice suddenly soft and concerned.  “You have been doing exceptional job as guardian!  The children, they see you, no?”

“Yeah, yeah they see me,” Jack assured the other guardian.  “It’s wonderful, North.  It really is.  I’ve never had so much fun before, and I really feel like I’ve found what I’m meant to do.  But…”

“But what?  Something is not right?”

“Yeah.  Something.”  Jack stopped walking, tried to look North in the eyes, and found he couldn’t.  “It’s my memories,” he confessed.  “I can’t…  I feel like I’m suffocating in them.  What if I’m not the person I was before I changed?  I spent three hundred years not know that I was ever human, that I ever had a family!  Three hundred years not thinking it would ever end, not thinking I could ever die!  And now I can’t stop.”  North’s brow creased with concern.

“You are thinking you will die?  Are you afraid the children will stop believing—that you will fade?”  Jack shook his head.

“I’m not afraid of fading.  And it’s not even that I’m afraid of dying again.  I know I can’t and—”

“Again?” North interrupted, a cold dread pooling in his belly.  Suddenly, he realized precisely what about Jack had always seemed wrong to him.   Jack’s skin was too pale, too white.  It was not just white as snow, but white as death, white as a corpse, white as bones frozen in the ice. 

“Yeah, that’s why the Man in the Moon chose me,” Jack continued.  “I saved my sister from drowning, and I fell through the ice instead.  Why?  Isn’t that how it works for all of us?”

“Oh, Jack,” North whispered, his blue eyes filled with sorrow.  “No.  No, it is not.”  Jack frowned, hurt and confused. 

More than ever before, North was reminded that even though Jack was a guardian, he was still a child.  He was a child who had wandered for centuries, alone and unloved, and North cursed himself for never noticing the boy before he had suddenly become important.  That wasn’t how it was supposed to work.  How might Jack’s life have been changed if North had taken an afternoon three hundred years ago to show him around the workshop?  How much pain might he have prevented by letting a frightened boy who gave far, far too much know that he was not alone in the world?

“Then why me?  Why bring me back?  Sure, I saved her.  I wasn’t the only person who died to save someone they loved!   I wasn’t the only person who died saving a child!  Why did he pick me?”  Jack could feel hysteria, pain, confusion, and anger all rising up inside him at once.  He didn’t like it.  He didn’t want it.  But he couldn’t stop it.  It made his vision white; a howling wind pulled at his insides and threatened to pitch him over the edge of something he didn’t know he’d been standing on.

“Jack! Jack, calm yourself!  You are safe.  You are Jack Frost.  You were chosen because no one else could be Jack Frost!  Only you.  Now _calm yourself_!”

Through the haze in his mind Jack could feel two strong hands on his shoulders.  They anchored him to reality, and slowly he reeled his fears back in.  Blinking, he could see ice and snow blasted on the walls and floor as if by a great wind.  There were icicles hanging from the ceiling, and North’s beard and clothes were covered in frost and snow.

“I’m sorry, North,” he whispered, wide-eyed and suddenly frightened of what else might be lurking inside him.  There was a destructive pain knotted up inside that he’d kept so well hidden he thought that maybe it could be healed by a few friends he saw a couple times a year and a growing collection of believers who saw him for three months and ignored him for nine.

“Is no big deal,” North assured him, brushing the ice from his beard.  “Let us go to my workshop.  I will get you eggnog, and we will talk, deal?”  Jack nodded, wiping some unbidden tears from his face as North led him away from the dripping, ice-blasted corridor.  “Everything will be well, Jack.  I promise you that.”

 

They talked for a long time.  Jack hadn’t known he had so much to say, and North was a good listener.  The elves brought in a continuous stream of eggnog and cookies, and before long, Jack was feeling more comfortable, full, and relaxed than he had in a while.  It had taken him until now to realize that it had been a very long time indeed since he’d been able to sit down with another person and really talk to them—just spill all his thoughts and feelings out and know that someone was really listening.

“So, you are saying that you are having hard time adjusting to idea of being human once and having memories.  You do not feel that you either deserve them, or your new believers.  And also, you are having nightmares of drowning again.”

“Yeah.  I guess so,” Jack said quietly.  He sipped some eggnog from a tiny porcelain cup as North eyed him from the opposite couch.

“Why are you not telling one of us sooner?” North asked.  He cursed himself again for not realizing just how much pain Jack was in and how foreign all this was to him.  Jack froze, surprised by the question.

“Well, I figured you guys were busy, and it was just something I had to figure out on my own.”  The older guardian shook his head.

“You are not alone, Jack.  Yes, being guardian is busy job, but you are just as important as any child.  Just because you are guardian does not mean you do not need help, that you do not get scared, or that you cannot come and talk to me, or any of us, when you are feeling sad or unsure.”  Jack looked up at North, his ice-crystal eyes filled with gratitude and relief.

“I just…  I don’t know what to do, North.  I don’t know what to do with these memories.  I can’t remember her name, you know.  My sister.  I can’t remember her name and I don’t know what happened to her.  Did she miss me when I…drowned?  She must have.”  Jack blinked back his tears.  “God, North.  I probably became Jack Frost right after that.  I walked through that village!  What if I saw her, and my parents, and never even knew it was them?  How could I do that to them?”  Jack’s words caught in his throat, and he wiped more tears from his face, embarrassed that he was crying in front of North.  The bigger guardian didn’t seem to mind though.  He got up from his seat and dropped himself next to Jack, pulling the boy into a massive, one-armed hug.

“It is okay to feel grief Jack, and regret.  The rest of us, we were not chosen like you were.  We did not die.  We were asked by Manny if we wished to become immortals, and protect children for countless lifetimes.  We were never unseen, we never forgot.”

“But why did he take away my memories?” Jack asked.  “Why would he do that to me?  Why didn’t he at least give me a choice?”

“I cannot answer that for you, Jack,” North said solemnly.  “But I think it would have been worse for you to have kept them when you became spirit of winter.  To see your family grieving, and not be able to help or console...I think it would have made you bitter.  Manny wanted to protect you from that.  The joys of childhood are the joys of the innocent.  That is what guardians protect.”

“I never thought about it like that,” Jack whispered, shocked.  Suddenly, he felt bad for blaming the Moon for resurrecting him in the way that he did.  Would he have wanted to remember his family so soon after his death?  It was not an easy question to answer, and he could not fault the Moon—at least not for saving him from grief so soon after he was given life again.

“It will take time to come to terms with your memories,” North continued.  “But they are _yours_.  Do not doubt that.  You were human and you had a family, and you gave that up to protect them.  No one can blame you for that.  You are selfless, and you are good, and you are _not_ alone.  And I am always here if you need to talk.  _Always_ , Jack.”

Jack smiled.  With the side of his face pressed up against North’s bulk, he could feel the other guardian’s heartbeat.  It was comforting, and it made him feel safe.  He pulled his legs up onto the couch and turned his face to bury it in North’s coat.

The older guardian was mildly surprised as Jack cuddled into him, having thought before that Jack disliked warmth.  Perhaps, he thought to himself, warmth was something Jack craved precisely because he did not have any of his own.  The thought made him sad, and he realized—suddenly, and with the fierceness of a parent—that he needed to keep this lonely boy safe, if no one else would.

Jack’s breathing slowed to the regular rhythm of sleep, and North, unwilling to wake the boy, closed his eyes and let himself drift off as well.  The workshop would be fine without him for an afternoon.  There were far more important things in the world than schedules and deadlines, and Jack Frost was one of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Amazing art done by the fantastic ohfeeliya on tumblr! Go check her out, she draws awesome stuff!


	2. Shadows

Jack woke gasping for air and thrashing madly against the crushing weight upon his chest.  As he tumbled from the couch and onto the floor, he realized in his mind’s peripheries that the weight on his chest had not been dark pond water, but North’s massive arm.  The other guardian was already on his feet by the time Jack hit the floor.

“I’m fine.  I’m fine,” Jack gasped, before North could get a word in.  He breathed in deeply a few times, trying to calm himself.

“Another nightmare?”  North asked quietly.  Jack nodded.

“Do you think—”  He paused for breath before shooting a worried glance up at North.  “Do you think Pitch could be doing this?  Giving me nightmares?”

“Pitch?  No, no.  I do not think so.  He should be out of commission for long time,” the older guardian said, disturbed nonetheless.  Jack wobbled to his feet, reaching for his staff for support.

“Is it worth looking into, though?  Maybe we didn’t beat him as well as we thought.  Maybe he’s already out, and he wants revenge!  Maybe I’m only having these fears and nightmares because he’s making me have them!”

“Let us not be so hasty, Jack.  Just because Pitch controls fear, does not mean he controls all fear.  Fear exists even where Pitch has never gone.”  Jack frowned.

“But is it worth looking into?”  North let out a sigh, rubbing his chin with his thumb and forefinger.

“It is… worth looking into,” he admitted.  “I do not know how we would confirm whether this is Pitch’s doing without confronting the man himself, though.”

“Do you know where to find him?”

“No!  Last Easter, he vanished!” North exclaimed.  “Poof!  No one has seen the Boogieman since!”  Jack kicked the floor half-heartedly, spreading frost across the hardwood.

“So there’s no way of finding him.”

“I would not be saying that, exactly,” North said, almost reluctantly.  Instantly, Jack perked up.

“What do you mean?”  He followed North as he walked across the workshop to an elegantly carved bookshelf and started rifling through it.

“We may not be able to get ourselves to where Pitch is, but there may be way to get Pitch here.”

“You mean we can summon him?” Jack asked, peering curiously over North’s shoulder as he sorted through dozens of leather-bound volumes.  He handled the books delicately.  It was always a surprise to Jack how someone so large could be so gentle.

“In manner of speaking, yes.  Ah!  Here we go!”  He stomped back over to his worktable and laid out a very plain looking text.  Once opened, however, Jack could see it was anything but.  The book was entirely handwritten in a language Jack could not read.  It was the same language that decorated the globe in the centre of the workshop.

“What language is that, North?” Jack asked, unable to bear not knowing.

“Is very old language,” he said, flipping through pages of cramped, scrawling text and strange symbols, “From long time ago and very far away.  Is Man in Moon’s language.  First one he learned.”

‘Wow,’ Jack mouthed wordlessly, flipping over North to get a better look at the alien writing.  “You mean the Man in the Moon was young once?  Was he human like we were?”  It was strange to think that the silent watcher who had raised Jack from the dead, given him his name, and made him a guardian might have once been an ordinary child.  North shook his head.

“Man in Moon is not from Earth.  He came in ship as child from far away, a very long time ago.  Language you see is language of stars.  Very old, very powerful.  Once, that language was spoken all through the universe.  Now, there are few who understand it.”  Jack leaned his elbows on the edge of the desk, his legs crossed and floating in the air behind him.

“Are you one of them?” he asked.  North nodded, still flipping hurriedly through the book.

“Yes.  Man in Moon taught me himself.  How long ago?  Almost six hundred years, I think.”  Jack whistled appreciatively.  Sometimes he forgot just how long the other guardians had been around.  “Aha!” North exclaimed.

“What is it?  Did you find something?” Jack asked eagerly.  North hummed affirmatively, tapping a scribble of star script with his finger.

“There are instructions here for shadow summoning.”  North frowned.  “Unpleasant business.  But if we are careful, I think we can use it to bring Pitch here.  We will need supplies!  And one more guardian.”

“Why do we need someone else?  Just in case Pitch attacks?  Couldn’t you and I take him?”  North shook his head.

“Ritual requires three participants.  A trinity.”  He made a triangle with his fingers.  “This is not just summoning spell, is also trap!  And we need three to make it work.”

“Should I go get someone?  Sandy?  Tooth?”  Jack suggested.  North waved dismissively at him.

“I am thinking Tooth for this.  Sandy… may not approve.”

“Are you sure this is a good idea?”  Jack asked, becoming sceptical at North’s unwillingness to include Sandy in their plans.  Wasn’t he the oldest and most powerful of the guardians?  Why didn’t North want him knowing about this?  Was ‘shadow summoning’ some kind of taboo?

“Bah!  Do not worry, Jack Frost!”  North boomed, clapping the younger guardian on the back.  “We will stop these nightmares of yours.  You stay here, and I will send for Tooth and get supplies!”  With that, he stormed out the door, barking orders to some passing yeti before disappearing out of sight.  Jack spun idly around his staff and leaned down to look at the book North had been reading from.  He couldn’t understand the language of stars, but the drawings around the spell needed no translation.  Dark shapes with gnashing teeth and long, skeletal arms danced around the page.  Their eyes were empty sockets, white in their black, shapeless faces.  Looking at them, Jack felt a trickle of fear go down his spine.  He turned away, wondering if this was such a good idea after all.

 

North burst back into the room a short while later with a box of knickknacks in his arms.  He dropped it on the floor with a heavy thunk, and began rifling through it.  When Jack approached, a tall bottle of black liquid was thrust into his hands.

“What—”

“Is ink.  Go, paint triangle on floor.”  Jack nodded as North handed him a brush.  He found an open patch of floor and painted a triangle with sides twice as long as his forearm.  When he turned back to North to ask what to do next, some elves hurried over carrying candles.  They put one candle on each point of the triangle, and one in the centre.

“Paint spiral coming out from centre candle!” North instructed, and Jack did so.  When he had finished, North came over and took the brush from him.  He started painting symbols around the edges of the triangle—incantations in star script, Jack inferred.  When the older guardian had finished, he stood up to admire their handiwork.  The elves clustered around his feet, eyeing the black mark on the floor suspiciously.

“Is almost ready.  Now we are just needing—”

Before he could finish, Toothiana burst into the room, her tiny helpers flitting around her, ready for a fight.

“North!  What’s going on!” she shouted, “Is Pitch here?  Has he attacked the Pole again?”  North walked over to her, motioning her to calm down with his hands.

“Toothy!  Is alright.  There is no boogieman here.  No one has seen Pitch since last Easter.”  The Tooth Fairy relaxed, her hard expression changing to one of mild annoyance.

“Oh.  Well, why did you call me, then?  You know I’m busy.  Kids losing teeth left and right.  I have a schedule to keep!”  Her fairies chittered in agreement.  Jack got up off the floor and walked over to her, gaining her attention.  “Oh!  Jack!  Ehe.”  She smiled at him, embarrassed.  “I didn’t see you over there.”  A fairy sat down on her shoulder, sighing wistfully in Jack’s direction.  Jack coughed awkwardly, a cool blush rising in his cheeks.

“Hi, Tooth.  Ah.  We called you because we need your help.  I’ve been having, uh, nightmares recently, and we think Pitch might be involved.”  Toothiana covered a gasp with her hand.

“Oh, no.  Are you okay? Is it serious?”  Before Jack could respond, North interjected.

“He is fine for now, but we are needing to get to the bottom of this.  I have found shadow summoning ritual that can bring Pitch here, but we need your help to make it work.”  Toothiana looked worried as she fluttered to the floor, her fairies clinging to her shoulders and head.

“I don’t like the sound of this.”

“If we are all playing our parts correctly, everything will be fine,” North insisted, ushering the other two guardians back to the markings on the floor.  They each kneeled by a point, and North struck a match and lit the four candles.  North looked hard at Jack.

“Jack.  I can lay most of groundwork for summoning, but trick is to form a connection with what you are summoning.  To find a shadow in the dark and pull it towards you.  Is tricky, and dangerous, and you cannot always be sure of what you will call.”  Jack swallowed the knot of apprehension in his throat, nodding.  “That is why you need to be the one to call Pitch here.”

“What!” Jack exclaimed.  “Why me?”

“You and Pitch have a connection, don’t you?”  Tooth added quietly.  Jack turned to look at her, the surprise clear in his expression.

“What?  Why would you say that?  I’m nothing like Pitch.”  Toothiana cast her gaze at the floor.

“Baby Tooth told me about what happened in Antarctica.  About Pitch’s offer.”  A splinter of fear lodged itself in Jack’s gut as she spoke.  He felt like he was going to be ill.

“I would _never_ choose Pitch over you,” Jack choked.  “You can’t think that.  You can’t.”

“No!  No, Jack.  That wasn’t what I was trying to say!”  Toothiana pleaded.  “I only meant that of all of us, you understand him best, don’t you?  You were lonely for a long time, and I’ll bet—I’ll bet you were afraid, too.”  Jack stared hard at the floor, but looked up when he felt a gentle hand on his shoulder.  Toothiana’s eyes were compassionate and understanding.  “You and Pitch have been in dark places that the rest of us haven’t.  I think we can only make sure it’s Pitch we call here if you’re the one calling him.”  She retracted her hand and settled back down, waiting.

“What do you mean, we can only be sure it’s Pitch if I’m the one to call him?  Who else would I call?”  North and Toothiana exchanged looks of unease.

“There are more things that go bump in the night than Pitch, Jack,” North confessed.

“Older things,” added Tooth.  “Worse things.”

“Things that have not seen the light of this world since the time before, when Manny was still a child.”  Jack thought of the black demons on the page (their hollow eyes boring deep into his own) and shuddered.

“This is the only way to find him, though, isn’t it?”

“I believe so,” North said.  Jack nodded, sucking in a breath that pulled all his insecurities back inside.  If this required courage, then courage he would find.

“What do I need to do?”

North’s expression was solemn.  “I will start with incantation.  And, one at a time, we will blow out three candles.  Then you say, ‘Pitch Black, King of Nightmares.  I call upon you, appear before me.’  And then, you take rest of ink—you still have it?”  Jack held up the bottle.  “You take rest of ink, and you pour over centre candle, and you think very hard of Pitch Black.  Worst moments, best moments, moments in which he is clearest.  You are getting that?”  Jack nodded tersely, mentally readying himself.  “Then here we go.”

North held the book in front of him and began to read a strange, aspirated litany.  Every word seemed punctuated by breaths and sighs, and Jack wondered if this was how stars spoke to one another across the silence of space.  (A language of gaps and waiting and longing.)  The room felt as if it were getting darker, but it might just have been Jack’s imagination.  North paused for a moment to blow out his candle.  Daylight flickered.  The elves huddled in a corner.  Jack felt a shiver run down his spine as North picked up the incantation again.  The sound of it filled the room.  Then, he gestured at Tooth, who blew out her own candle.  Again, the light in the room flickered.

Jack looked out the window and felt a cold dread pooling in his belly as he saw that the sun, in the peak of daylight, had grown dim.  Shadows loomed and crawled around the edges of the room and rippled in the corners of his vision.  The chanting continued.  It hardly sounded like North’s voice anymore.  It sounded like the voice of someone far away, calling out from the end of a long tunnel or the bottom of a well.  Jack felt a tug on his hoodie and looked down to see one of the baby tooth fairies gesturing at North.  It was Jack’s turn to blow out his candle.

The winter spirit sucked in a breath, and blew out the tiny flame.  The room was plunged into darkness.  The only light was the one remaining candle, flickering valiantly against the ravening dark.

“Pitch Black,” Jack called, his voice trembling with fear’s touch.  “I call upon you!  Appear before me!”  He lifted the bottle of ink, blacker still against the blackness of the room, and poured it over the candle.  The flame sputtered and died as the ink swallowed it, oozing down the tallow and onto the floor.  It spread more quickly than Jack had anticipated.  Following the spiral he had drawn, the ink ran against the floor, filling up the last remaining patch of wood with oily dark.  As the last of his sight ebbed away, Jack closed his eyes and _thought_.

He thought hard.  He thought of Pitch.  He thought of the rage he’d felt when Pitch had killed Sandy—the rage that had pulled all the fury of winter out of him.  He thought of the fear he’d felt when he’d been trapped in Pitch’s labyrinth, falling through the dark and being stalked by shadows that whispered all his greatest fears to him.  He thought of the hope he’d felt when Pitch had told him that he believed in him, that he understood what it was like to long for companionship—that he didn’t need to long anymore.  He thought of the pain he’d felt when Pitch had tricked him and snapped his staff.  He thought of the pity he’d felt when he saw Pitch realize the children could not see him.  He thought of the regret he’d felt when Pitch was dragged back into the dark by his own nightmare creations.  He remembered thinking ‘this victory feels wrong,’ but moving on because what could he really do about it?  _Pitch_ , he thought, _we’re not done, and I have questions for you whether you want to answer them or not_.

A horrific scream rent the air, and Jack felt himself pulled back into the present.  All of the darkness that had filled the room had been sucked into the triangle, where it was twisting and howling and thrashing against its intangible trappings.  Inside the dark whirlwind, a shape began to form.  It clawed at the shadow tendrils with long fingers, and in the depths of that black mass, Jack could see two yellow eyes growing brighter.

“Guardians,” a familiar voice echoed as the whirlwind slowed, and Pitch Black’s body solidified inside the triangle.  “What have you done?”

“We have brought you out from wherever you have been hiding,” North answered.  Pitch looked confused. (And frightened?)

“What for?” he asked, suspicious.

“Answers,” snapped Toothiana, glaring hard at the creature who had very nearly collapsed all belief in her existence.  Pitch turned to her, his eyes hollow with exhaustion.

“And what makes you think I have any of those?” he asked, voice hoarse.  Toothiana’s feathers puffed up indignantly.

“Have you been sending Jack nightmares?  And don’t even think about lying to us right now.  You can’t.”  Pitch looked down at the markings that kept him trapped and grimaced.

“So that’s how you got me out.  Didn’t think anyone knew how to make these anymore.  A little risky, don’t you think?” he asked, watching North out of the corner of his eye.

“Answer the question.”  Pitch shifted his gaze back to Tooth.

“No,” he snapped, eyes narrowed.  “I haven’t sent poor little Jack any nightmares as of late.  I haven’t been doing much of anything since last we met.”  He paused, his anger fading.  “What month is it?”

“April,” Jack answered.  Pitch barked out a humourless laugh.

“Not the same April I’d imagine?”

“It’s been a year.”  Jack eyed the Boogieman more carefully.  He looked gaunt and tired—perhaps even ill.  “Where have you been this whole time?”

“A nightmare,” Pitch replied tersely, and Jack felt a wave of guilt crash over him.  Had Pitch been trapped by his own fears down there in the dark for an entire year?  What did the Boogieman fear?  Oh yes, he knew the answer to that question—loneliness.  Somehow, Jack felt that no matter how much damage Pitch had done, he hadn’t deserved that kind of fate.

“How long would you have been stuck there if we hadn’t pulled you out?”  Jack asked.  Pitch shrugged.

“Who knows?  A year?  Two years?  Twenty?  There’s not much fear of the dark in the world anymore.  Not like there used to be.”  He eyed Jack thoughtfully.  “Though I see there are still a few who go to sleep afraid of what might be waiting for them behind the veil of wakefulness.”

“I’m not afraid of you,” Jack said defiantly.  Pitch’s smile looked almost wistful.

“We both know that’s not entirely true now, is it?”  He tapped the side of his nose with a long finger, smiling toothily at Jack. 

 

 

The winter spirit was about to fire another retort when Toothiana intervened.

“Leave him alone, you monster.  You should be thanking us.”  Pitch’s smile twisted into an expression of loathing.

“I’d rather be back in the deepest pits of the Earth, being tormented by the worst nightmares imaginable, than thank _you_ , you bird-brained, gaudy twat,” he hissed.  Toothiana flinched at the insult, and Jack pointed his staff threateningly at the trapped nightmare king.

“You need to leave.”  Pitch laughed.

“Break the seal, then.  Set me free,” he breathed.  (Was that desperation Jack could hear?)  There was a wicked gleam in his sickly yellow eyes.  Jack looked to North for guidance.

“Hmph.  Be on your way, and stay out of trouble!” he warned, and bent down to scratch through one of the lines of paint.  The Boogieman smiled innocently.

“Oh, I don’t know if I can promise that.”  Laughing, he vanished like a wisp of smoke, and brightness returned to the workshop.  The guardians let out a collective sigh.

“I am sorry we did not get any answers for you, Jack,” said North.  “But I am glad Pitch has not been up to his mischief.”  Jack nodded.  He almost wished it _had_ been Pitch giving him nightmares.  It would have made things easier to have an enemy he could see and hear.

“We should have put him back, instead of just letting him go,” Toothiana said hotly.  “He’s so rude!  And his teeth, yuck!  I can’t believe the Man in the Moon ever wanted him to join us.”

“Whoa!” Jack exclaimed, throwing both his hands up.  “ _What?_ ”  He gawked at North and Toothiana, who shuffled awkwardly under his incredulous stare.  “The Moon asked _Pitch_ to be a guardian?  When was this?  Why didn’t I know about it?”  Why hadn’t they told him before?  Did they not trust him or something?  Jack, despite himself, felt just a little bit betrayed.

“Was long time ago,” North said quickly.  “I had just been chosen myself.  To tell you truth, I had nearly forgotten.”  Jack couldn’t believe what he was hearing.  _Pitch?  A guardian?_

“But this changes everything!” he exclaimed, to the other guardians’ surprise.  Toothiana flitted about, worried.

“What do you mean, Jack?”

“There’s always a reason a guardian is chosen, right?” he said, pacing back and forth across the workshop.  “Well, what’s Pitch’s reason?  Here—here I thought there was nothing to him!  That he was just—just empty!  He’d use your fears, and pretend to be your friend, and then trick you!  Only give you one way out.  His way.  And it would always be the worst thing you could do.”  He stopped pacing.  “But if that was true, why would he be chosen?  There’s gotta be a reason.  There has to be something worthwhile in him somewhere.”  Tooth looked bitter for a moment.

“No, Jack.  I don’t think there’s anything more to Pitch.  He’s cruel and selfish, and when we offered guardianship to him he turned it down.  He doesn’t care about children.  He just wants to be feared.  That’s all he understands.”  She almost regretted saying that, when she saw how crestfallen Jack looked.

“That’ can’t be true, though,” he insisted, conflicted.  “The Man in the Moon always has a reason, doesn’t he?”

“Even Manny can be wrong, Jack,” said North, as gently as he could.  Jack shook his head, tapping his staff in frustration.

“Why does it matter so much to you?”  Toothiana asked.  “There are bad people in the world, and sometimes that’s all there is to it.”

“But you said it yourself,” Jack said, looking at her accusingly.  “We have a connection.  I think you were right.  I don’t know, I just…  I feel like I have to help him.  Didn’t you see how tired he looked?  I don’t think he’s so dangerous anymore.  His own nightmares turned on him!  I know…  I know what it feels like to be so alone you just want to wreck everything.  And you!”  He looked up at the other guardians.  “You guys saved me from that!  Even when I turned you down first.  I just couldn’t believe it, you know?  Three hundred years, and none of you noticed me.  And then suddenly you wanted me to be a guardian?  Can you blame me for being sceptical?  How much longer did Pitch spend alone?  Can you blame him for saying no?  Maybe if I’d spent another three hundred years invisible, I’d have gotten so angry I’d be just like him now!  You stopped that from happening, but Pitch doesn’t have anyone.  Maybe I have to be that someone.”

“That is heavy burden to put on yourself, Jack.  Pitch is not your responsibility,” North said.  Toothiana nodded in agreement, but Jack had made up his mind.

“Someone has to take on that responsibility.  Otherwise, none of this will ever end, and no one will ever be happy.  When Pitch gets stronger, he’ll just attack us again!  Or if he doesn’t get stronger, he’ll just fade away, won’t he?  And I don’t want that to happen, no matter what he’s done.  Even he doesn’t deserve that,” Jack said firmly.  North sighed, smiling despite himself.

“You are too selfless for your own good, Jack Frost.”  He clapped Jack enthusiastically on the back.  “So, what will you do?”  Jack thought for a moment.

“I think…I’m going to convince him to become a guardian.”  He looked up at North, unsure.  “He can still become one, right?  Once guardianship is offered, isn’t it always there?”  North nodded.

“It was for you, as you said yourself.  If at first you say no, is always time to change your mind.”

“That’s what I’ll do then.”

“He won’t agree to it,” Tooth added.  “I’m sorry, Jack.  I just think you’re getting your hopes up for nothing.  We couldn’t convince him six hundred years ago.  And he’s only gotten nastier since then.”  Jack shrugged.

“Hey, have you heard me talk?  I can be convincing!  I’ve got charm.”  He flashed a smile at her.  A fairy sitting on her shoulder swooned and fell.  She caught it before it hit the floor, embarrassed.

“Are you planning on going straight to him?  Do you want one of us to go with you?”  Jack waved her away.

“Nah.  You guys are busy.  I’ve taken up enough of your time already.  Besides, I think I need to do this on my own.”

“Then you should at least take Baby Tooth with you.  In case you need to send for us.”  As she spoke, Baby Tooth popped up from behind her head.  She flew over to Jack and nuzzled his face, chirping excitedly.  Toothiana smiled.  “She’s missed you.”

“Aww,” Jack laughed, patting the tiny tooth fairy’s head affectionately.  “I missed you too, buddy.”

“You be careful,” North told him, poking Jack in the chest with a thick finger.  “I will be keeping close eye on you.  If Pitch makes trouble, you come right back here, _ponimayete_?”  Jack nodded.

“Yeah, I gotcha.”

“You are not alone, Jack Frost.  Remember that.”

The winter spirit hopped out the door and into the main room of the workshop, waved goodbye to North, Toothiana, and some passing elves and yeti, and shot up into the air.  _I’m not alone_ , he thought as he burst out into the frigid, snow-driven wind.  He laughed, bright and honest.

“I’m not alone!”

 

Back at the workshop, Toothiana and North watched the younger guardian fly off into the distance.

“I don’t like this at all, North.”

“I know.”

“I don’t think we should have summoned Pitch like that.  I don’t think we should have made Jack do it.”

“I know.”

“Wasn’t that ritual used for revenge summonings?  During the war?”

“Sometimes.  More often to call memory wraiths.”  Toothiana’s eyes went wide.

“He’s just a kid, North,” she said harshly.  “He shouldn’t be doing this on his own.  He shouldn’t be doing this at all.”  North shrugged.

“He is stubborn.”

“He has no idea what he’s going to find.”

“Do _we_ know what he will find?”  North asked, looking down at the other guardian.  Toothiana crossed her arms and frowned.

“No.  But it will be bad, North.  I can’t imagine what happened to turn Pitch into what he became, and I don’t want to.”  North looked back out the window.

“I believe in Jack Frost,” he said.  “Don’t you?”  Toothiana blushed, embarrassed by her doubt.

“Of course I do!  I just… I’m scared for him, North.  I don’t want him to get hurt.”

“Jack is strong, and he is brave, and he is kind.  If anyone can save Pitch from himself, it is Jack,” North said firmly.  Toothiana sighed.

“I suppose.  But I don’t have to like it.”  The guardian of wonder laughed, and patted her affectionately on the head.

“Go back to your teeth collecting, _lapushka_.  I have a feeling Jack will need your help again soon.”  Tooth brushed his hand off, exasperated.

“If Pitch hurts him in any way, there won’t be a dark place in the world where he can hide from me.”

“That, I do not doubt,” North laughed.  He waved off the guardian of memories, and she and her fairies took their leave.  North turned to look out the window again.  Something was stirring in the cold air, and he knew that Jack Frost was at the heart of it.  Somehow, that boy always knew how to put himself right in the middle of things the rest of them had spent entire lifetimes toeing the edges of.  Only time would tell if that was his gift, or his curse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Russian:  
> ponimayete - shortened from the Russian phrase for "Do you understand me?"  
> lapushka - Russian term of endearment
> 
> Art by the always amazing ohfeeliya on tumblr! Go check her out!


	3. Memories

One week later, Jack was still not any closer to locating Pitch.  The first place he’d checked was the forest on the outskirts of Burgess, but neither the rotten bedframe nor the dark pit beneath it had reappeared.  How did one track down the monster under the bed?  Perhaps by looking under beds.

At night Jack searched for children caught in nightmare sleep.  Usually he could find three to five in a night, trembling in their sheets, a fear-twisted monstrosity trotting around their heads.  When Jack crept into the child’s room, the nightmare would snort menacingly at him, its yellow eyes flashing.  Even though it pained him to see children in pain, the nightmares were his only lead, and he couldn’t risk destroying them.  He was letting small evils go so that he could cure a greater one, he reasoned.  Cautiously, he crept over to the bedside and kneeled down to look into the space between mattress and floor—the place where children’s fears take shape.

“Pitch,” he called softly, not wanting to wake the child.  “I need to talk to you.  If you can hear me, please come out!”  When that didn’t work, he would try crawling under the bed.  Maybe he would fall through the darkness and into Pitch’s domain.  But that didn’t work either, and after a few minutes he would give up and move on to another house.  (But not before chasing away the miniature nightmare.)

After a week of disappointments and dead ends, Jack returned to his pond.  He skated barefoot across the surface, grumbling crossly to himself.  He hadn’t thought finding Pitch would be so difficult.  Baby Tooth sat on his shoulder and patted his cheek comfortingly.

“I just don’t know what else to do, Baby Tooth.”  He made a backwards figure-eight across the ice.  “I don’t he think he wants to be found.  Don’t you think the nightmares would have told him, or something?  I must have scared off at least two dozen of them.”  Baby Tooth shrugged.  “Maybe he really doesn’t have any control of them anymore.  Maybe they’re just running around wild.  That doesn’t sound good at all…”

“It’s not,” a voice from the trees replied, startling Jack from his reveries.  Quickly, he skated over to the edge of the ice, looking for its source.

“Pitch?”

“Were you expecting someone else?” the boogieman asked, stepping out of the shadows to lean disinterestedly against a tree.  Jack grinned as he stepped off the ice.

“I’ve been looking for you.”

“So I heard.”  Pitch looked up from examining his nails, his yellow eyes following Jack carefully.  “The question is, why?”  Jack straightened his back and puffed out his chest, doing his best to look regal and important.

“I’ve come to ask you to become a guardian.”

Pitch stared.

“Aha.  Ha.  Hahahaha!”  He roared with laughter, causing Jack to deflate somewhat.  When the last spasms of laughter had ebbed, Pitch wiped a tear of mirth from the corner of his eye.

“You have got to be joking,” he said, at once dead serious.  Jack shook his head.

“I’m not.”  Pitch’s disbelief turned quickly to anger.

“Don’t play games with me, boy.  You won’t win.”

“I did last time.”  _Oh crap,_ Jack thought.  _Bad move, Frost._ Pitch seemed to swell with his rage.

“If all you wanted was to rub your victory in my face, then I have no reason to be here,” he hissed.  “I will not be made a fool of by the likes of you.”  He turned to leave.

“Wait!” Jack called out, hurrying into the woods after him.  “Wait, I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean that.  Don’t leave!  What did you mean, about the nightmares?  About them running wild?”  Pitch stopped in the shadow of a tree.

“Like you said, I’ve lost control of them,” he snapped.  “They do as they please, and I stay out of their way.”

“Is that why you haven’t gone back to your…” he searched for the right word, “home?”  Pitch’s expression was sour.

“I am, in essence, ‘homeless’ at the moment.”  Jack floated up into the air, leaning on the head of his staff.

“Do you have a plan?” he asked.

“Beg pardon?”

“Do you have a plan to get control back?  So that nightmares aren’t just running around and doing whatever they want,” Jack clarified.  Pitch sneered at him.

“Why do you care?”

“Organized crime is better than disorganized crime.”  The boogieman laughed at Jack’s unexpected reply.

“I suppose.  But I’m afraid I’ll have to disappoint you.  I don’t have a plan this time, Jack.  If no one fears the boogieman, the boogieman has no power.  Nightmares will exist with or without my interference.  Until enough children fear me, I will not be able to control them.”  Jack thought about this for a moment.

“If you became a guardian, I’m sure the other guardians and I could help you,” he said.  Pitch glared at him.

“Even if I believed you, what makes you think I would ever wish to be a guardian?  In case you haven’t noticed, protecting children’s hopes and dreams is not high on my to-do list.”  Jack rolled onto his back in the air.

“North told me that the Moon chose you a long time ago, the same way he chose me and all the other guardians.  He always has a reason.”  Pitch scoffed.

“You’d put such blind faith in a being who dragged you from the ice, gave you a name, and then just left, without a word of guidance?  He took your memories from you, Jack.  Why do you trust him to know what’s right?”  Jack shrugged.

“I wish he hadn’t taken my memories away, but I understand why he did it now, even if I didn’t before.”  The boogieman rolled his eyes.

“Well, I can tell you with utmost sincerity that I haven’t the faintest idea why he would choose me to be a guardian.  And frankly, I don’t _care_.”  Jack rolled back over onto his stomach, still floating in the air.

“North says that we all have a centre—buried deep inside us—that makes who we are and guides us through our lives.  Sometimes it’s hard to find, and sometimes we lose sight of it, but it’s always there.”

“My centre is fear, Jack.  It’s not hard to figure out.”  The winter spirit shook his head.

“There has to be more than that, though.  The Moon wouldn’t want you to be a guardian if all you were good for was scaring kids and making them miserable.  You just have to think about it!”  Pitch glared at him, his temper rising.

“There is nothing to think about!  I am the boogieman!”  Jack drifted to the ground, gripping his staff tightly.

“But who were you before that?  Why did you become the boogieman?”

Pitch looked startled, as if the idea was at once foreign and frightening to him.

“I have always been this,” he said bitterly.  Jack frowned.

“But that can’t be right.  All of us were human once—well, most of us. _I_ was human once.  So were North and Toothiana.  And Sandy!  Not so sure about Bunny…”

“Well, I wasn’t,” Pitch snapped.  “I am older than all of you!”  Darkness gathered around him.  He grew taller, wider, curving and twisting until he was looming over and around Jack—until he had made the shadow of every leaf and branch and fern his own.  “Older than Sanderson.  Older,” he boomed, “than the Man in the Moon!  I was the first, Jack Frost.  I have always been and always will be!  Because fear is the oldest and strongest emotion there is!  There will always be fear, and there will always be me!”

Baby Tooth hid in the folds of Jack’s hood as the young guardian brandished his staff at the threatening darkness.  Pitch had melted into the shadows of the trees.  Cold laughter rang all around him, and Jack was afraid.

“Now, leave!” Pitch howled.  A blast of rank air sent Jack toppling backwards.  Deciding it was best to leave Pitch be for now, he raced back through the woods toward his pond.  Creepers whipped at his ankles, trying to drag him down.  Thorny vines lacerated his calves, and he felt the sting of it.  With a last rush of adrenaline, Jack burst from the nightmare woods and out onto the ice, stumbling and sliding out across the surface.  He scrambled to his feet and turned back to the woods, brandishing his staff in case Pitch had decided to pursue him.  But the shadows had vanished.  Moonlight filtered softly through the trees and a thick silence settled upon the woods.  Jack let out the breath he’d been holding, and slouched against his staff.

“Well, that went well.”  He groaned, knocking his forehead against the shepherd’s crook in frustration.  “What do I do now, Baby Tooth?”  The little tooth fairy crawled out of his hood and hovered by his face, concerned.  “Is he right?  Was he really the first?  Was he always Pitch?”  Jack imagined early people huddled in caves, afraid to leave the fireside as, outside, shadows twisted themselves into something humanoid and horrible—a hollowed-out shell made of fear and darkness itself, soulless and hungry—Pitch Black.

“No!” he insisted, shaking the thoughts from his mind.  “That can’t be right.  Argh.  What do I do?”  He sat down on the ice, confused and upset.  Baby Tooth flitted around in front of him, chirping insistently.

“That’s right!” Jack exclaimed perking up at once.  “Maybe he forgot!  Just like I forgot!”  He paused again, having hit another wall.  “But how do we get him to remember?”  Baby Tooth twittered again.  “Teeth?  Do you think Toothiana has them?”  The tooth fairy shrugged.  “We could go and check, though.  Yeah, let’s do that.”  He got to his feet, and Baby Tooth zipped back into his hoodie pocket.  The pouch inflated for a moment when she sneezed.  “Sorry about that,” Jack said.  “Remind me to get you a hand warmer after we talk to Tooth.”

 

Travelling by wind was not as fast as North’s sleigh or Bunny’s warrens, but it was Jack’s preferred form of travel, and it was still pretty damn fast.  As he approached Toothiana’s domain, little clouds of fairies danced around him, chattering gleefully and occasionally patting his hair or cheek before going on their way.  Jack warmed at the attention.  Even though winter was his element and he didn’t think there was anything in the world more beautiful than a landscape glittering white with freshly fallen snow, he couldn’t help but be taken with Tooth’s home.  A golden summer world of bright colours and shining towers, he felt like he’d tumbled straight into a fairy tale.

Toothiana was at the centre of it all, directing her tiny copies as they hummed about the citadel, busy as bees.  When he approached her, she passed the delegating off to a couple of her helpers, and fluttered down to Jack.

“Jack!  I wasn’t expecting to see you again so soon,” she exclaimed.  “How are you?  How is…”

“Pitch?” Jack supplied.  Tooth’s expression became serious.

“Yes.”  Jack rubbed the side of his neck, a little embarrassed.

“Well, I found him.  He says he’s “homeless” right now.  Not enough kids are afraid of him, so he’s lost control of the nightmares and they’re running wild.”  The tooth fairy frowned, unsettled by this revelation.

“I’m guessing he didn’t go for the guardian idea,” she inferred.

“Not so much,” Jack admitted.  “But I have a plan!  And I need your help.”

“My help?” Toothiana asked, uneasy about involving herself with Pitch.

“Yeah.  You’re the guardian of memories,” Jack explained.  “When I asked Pitch about who he was before he became Pitch, he seemed really confused.  He thinks he’s always been the boogieman, just like I thought I’d always been Jack Frost.  I think he forgot, just like I did.”  Toothiana nodded.

“Yes, probably.  I’m not surprised.”

“Oh, well,” Jack said, a little embarrassed for being the last one to figure that out.  “I mean, I was just hoping that maybe, since you helped me remember who I was, maybe you could help him.”

“I don’t think it works like that, Jack,” she said as gently as she could, not wanting to disappoint him, but knowing that she would anyway.

“Do you not have his teeth?”

“I’m sorry, Jack.  I don’t.  Pitch was around a long time before me.  I don’t know who he was, and I don’t have his teeth.”

“Oh,” Jack said, slouching against his staff.  Toothiana patted him on the shoulder.

“I think you should go and talk to Sandy,” she told him.  “Of all of us, he probably knows the most about Pitch.  He might be able to help.”  Jack nodded.

“Yeah, that’s a good idea.  Thanks, Tooth!” he said, smiling brightly at her.  She smiled back.

“Be careful, Jack.  I know you don’t think Pitch is much of a threat right now, but don’t let your guard down.  He’s not like the rest of us.”

“I’ll be careful, don’t worry!” he said, hopping over to the edge of the tower.  He waved goodbye, and dropped off the edge, caught and pulled up by a gust of wind.  She waved him off, hoping he knew what he was doing, before fluttering back up to her post, delegating orders with a little less enthusiasm than before.

 

Jack had never been to the Sandman’s castle before, but once he had he knew he’d be finding every excuse to come and visit the smallest of the guardians.  Far out into the ocean (which ocean, Jack did not know) rose an island of shining dream sand.  It was always night here, in the Sandman’s world, but it was a bright, calming night filled with the glow of stars and dreams.  Mermaids lounged on the lower shores, laughing and combing their golden hair.  They waved at Jack as he flew overhead, blowing him kisses that put a faint blush on his cheeks.  Sandy’s castle rose out of the highest point of the island, and Jack soared in through a high arch of golden sand.

“Sandy!” he called as he walked through the dreamlike halls.  “Sandy, are you here?”  There was a tap at his hip.  Jack turned and looked down to see the smallest guardian smiling up at him.  Jack grinned.  “Hey, little man.  How have you been?”

The guardian of dreams shrugged, still smiling, which Jack interpreted as, “Same as usual.”  Then a question mark appeared over his head.

“Me?  Oh, I’ve been…I’ve been having a little trouble.”

The sandman cocked his head, frowning.

“I’ve been having nightmares,” Jack admitted.

His words seemed to make Sandy angry.  The small guardian’s eyes went wide.  He glanced around the room, lips pursed.

“It wasn’t Pitch.  Don’t worry, we checked.”  This seemed to calm Sandy for a moment, before making him suspicious again.  A checkmark appeared over his head, followed by another question mark.  Jack looked sheepish.

“North, Tooth, and I used ‘Shadow Summoning’ to bring him to the Pole and question him.”

Shock and fury flashed across the usually peaceful guardian’s face.  He paced around, waving his arms, a slew of pictures appearing and disintegrating above his head.  Jack realized that North had been right when he said Sandy wouldn’t have approved.  Now he wanted to know why.

“What does that mean?  No one was hurt.  Except maybe Pitch.  He didn’t look good at all.”

Sandy waved his hand dismissively.  There was no love lost between him and the boogieman.

“Why is shadow summoning such a big deal?  North said that there was a chance we could have called something other than Pitch, something worse.  But we didn’t.  Everything went fine.”

Sandy shook his head and looked up at Jack with a mix of pity and betrayal.  Jack kneeled down in front of him.

“I don’t understand.”

Sandy slumped, looking defeated.  He at Jack, his eyes searching.  Jack resisted the urge to avert his gaze.  He knew he’d done something wrong, that he’d disappointed his friend.  He just didn’t know why.

“You never told me that the Man in the Moon wanted Pitch to become a guardian once,” Jack said softly.

Sandy looked away.

“I went to him, to ask him again,” the winter spirit continued.  “He said no, but I think I could change his mind.  I just need to get him to remember who he was before he became Pitch.”

Sandy turned back to Jack, surprised, and just a little horrified.

“That’s why I came here.  I wanted to ask you if you knew anything.”

Sandy frowned.

“ _Do_ you know anything?” Jack asked again.

Reluctantly, the sandman nodded.  Jack felt a flood of relief wash over him.

“Yes!  Alright.  Tell me!  I need to know everything.”

Sandy sighed, and conjured up an image of Pitch in the space between him and Jack.  With a wave of the sandman’s hand, Pitch changed.  He held a sword in his right hand and a shield as round and bright as the moon in his left.  He wore armour and a cape.  Jack’s mouth fell open in surprise.  The armoured Pitch swung the blade as a monster burst forth from the dream sand, lashing out with claws and teeth and tail.  Pitch blocked its strike with his shield, and chopped off its head with a single strike.  The beast crumbled back to sand.

“Pitch was a warrior?” Jack asked.

Sandy nodded, and the armoured Pitch rose up on a pillar of sand.  He raised his sword up in the air victoriously.

“A hero?” Jack asked.

Again, Sandy nodded. 

“Wow,” Jack breathed.  “But if he was a hero once, how did he become the boogieman?”

Sandy frowned, moving his arms to conjure up more sand.  A cage appeared beside Pitch.  Inside it, monsters squirmed.  Pitch sat beside it; his sword and shield lay beside him.  He hunched over, covering his ears and shaking his head.  A hand reached out of the bars of the cage, small and frail.  It groped for him.  Pitch raised his head, looking at the hand.  Slowly, he reached for it, and when he’d touched it, it grabbed him and dragged him toward the cage.  When he touched the bars, it burst open and the monsters swarmed around him.  Jack watched with horror as the monsters crumbled into sand, and Pitch rose to his feet, smiling, the armour gone, replaced with a cloak whose ragged edges rippled like shadows.

“He was guarding a…prison,” Jack interpreted, “And whatever he was guarding eventually got out, and turned him into Pitch?”  Sandy nodded.  Jack thought hard about what he’d just seen.

“So he was good, once.  Maybe he still is, deep down.  Maybe that’s why the Man in the Moon wanted him to be a guardian.  He knew that whoever he was once was still there, under all the fear.”

Sandy crossed his arms and shook his head.  Jack’s face fell.

“What?  You don’t think so?”

Sandy nodded.

“But the Moon wouldn’t have chosen him if there wasn’t anything good inside him,” Jack insisted, beginning to feel like a parrot.

Sandy frowned again.  He shook his head.  He pointed at Jack, then made an ‘X’ with his arms, and finally created an image of Pitch above his head.  Jack frowned.

“You don’t want me to try and convince him to be a guardian,” Jack stated.  Sandy nodded again, his expression serious.  “I can’t make that promise, Sandy.  I know there’s more to him than that.  There has to be.”

Sandy slumped, frustrated.  Jack patted him on the shoulder comfortingly.

“Thanks for telling me about his past,” Jack said.  “And thank you for worrying, but I have to do this.”  The guardian of dreams looked up at him, his expression pleading, begging Jack to change his mind.  But Jack Frost was as stubborn as a winter storm and persistent as the driving wind.  He waved goodbye to Sandy, and hopped out the window.  The cold wind calmed him and set him free.  He thought about what he would do next.  He had learned something valuable, but it wasn’t enough.

“Maybe I can get him to remember,” Jack said to himself.  “But how?  If he was a hero once, maybe I can show him he can be a hero again.  Hmmm…”  Lost in thought, he soared low over the ocean and into the gathering daybreak.  Of course, convincing Pitch of anything would require finding him again, just the thought of which was already making Jack frustrated.  There had to be a better way of doing this.  Suddenly, something Pitch had told him came back to him.  Jack smiled.

“If he’s homeless, maybe I’ll make him a home,” he said to himself.  Laughing, he changed currents.  There was a dark cavern in the Canadian wilderness that might do nicely for someone like Pitch.  Of course, Jack would need to make some modifications first, but how hard could that be for the spirit of winter?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now that I've started reading the books I've hit some rocky ground trying to reconcile two very different versions of Pitch in creating the background for this story. Should be interesting. Chapter 4 should be up within a week.


	4. Home

Jack had always thought himself something of an artist.  He delighted in the intricate crystal patterns he could create on any surface with a touch of his hand or a tap from his staff.  He could freeze drops of water into diamonds and dripping cliffs into glass waterfalls.  Snow was malleable as clay in his hands, and he could build wonders from it.  But he had never, in three hundred years, done something like this before.

High in the Northernmost peaks of the Rocky Mountains, there was a cavern whose ceiling stretched more than sixty feet up and extended several hundred feet into the heart of the mountain.  It was one of the secret winter places Jack had discovered in his many travels, but it wasn’t a home.  _What makes a home, though?_ Jack thought to himself.  Tables and chairs?  A kitchen?  Beds tucked up against the wall?  Blanket chests filled with family heirlooms?  A little window in the attic to sit in front of on winter nights and watch the stars twinkle in the dark?  Pitch needed none of these things, and neither did he, Jack realized with some sadness.

The domains of the guardians were not the same as those of humans, though.  Tooth’s palace was filled with nests for her tiny fairies to sleep in.  Bunny had tunnels and streams and trees where wild things grew and flourished.  Sandman had an island of wishes and dreams.  North had his toy-making workshop.  And Jack?  Jack had his pond.  It was the only home he had ever known—in this life, at least.

He thought back to his visit to Pitch’s domain—the one which the boogieman could not currently return to.  It had been dark and full of shadows through which Pitch could travel and hide in.  The cavern had that, to be certain.  Light filtered in from above, bathing the underground space in an eternal twilight.  What else?  Jack paced thoughtfully while Baby Tooth snuggled with a friction hand-warmer in his pocket.

There had been bridges, tunnels, stairways, dark water down below, a great metal globe (not unlike the one in North’s workshop), and a thousand cages hanging from the ceiling.  There might have been more, but Jack had not seen it.  Did Pitch sleep?  Jack did sometimes, and he knew the other guardians did.  However, with the exception of Sandy, they were all more organic than he was.  Although they were immortal, they still had human needs like food and sleep.  Jack, either because he was an elemental spirit, or because he had died, had no such needs.  He did not need to eat, he rarely needed sleep, and he did not need protection from the cold.  Heat made him weak and drained him, so he avoided warmer climates, but he did not require much to keep his body functioning.

What did Pitch need to survive?  What did he need to go about his duties?  What did he do for fun?  Jack was quickly realizing that he did not have the answers to these questions, and that he knew very little about Pitch indeed.

“I’ll start with the basics then,” Jack said to himself.  He gripped his staff tightly and struck the stalagmite nearest him.  Sheets of ice spread upward, higher and higher until they touched the ceiling and anchored themselves to it.  Jack struck the rock left and right, and pillars of ice rose up like marble columns in an ancient Roman temple.  Delighted, he got to work.  He hoped that, even if it was made of ice, Pitch would be pleased with his new home.

 

A week later, Jack had completed his work.  The once-barren cavern was now a glittering, evening palace of ice and stone.  There were pillars of carved ice, arches, staircases, and bridges.  Jack had created second and third levels entirely of ice, thick and unbreakable.  He had even built stables for the Nightmares, which he thought might be useful for Pitch once he finally got control of them again.  He’d also built a living-space for Pitch.  It contained a long table and chairs made of ice, a four-poster ice bedframe with a real mattress and blankets (that had been interesting to transport), and a bookshelf with a couple interesting books Jack had found and crammed into the side of one shelf.  The guardian had also taken a few creative liberties and built bannisters, spiral staircases, and one long slide around a few of the pillars.  If anyone could use a little fun in their life, it was Pitch.

“What do you think, Baby Tooth?” he asked as the little fairy poked her head out of his pocket.  She chittered enthusiastically.  “Yeah.  Not bad at all.”

Jack walked over to the entrance of the cave.  It was a calm, breezy and stormless evening.

“Now, let’s see if this works.”  He cupped his hands around his mouth.  “Pitch!” he cried.  The sound of his call echoed through the mountains, ringing in every dark and hollow place.  “Pitch, I need to talk to you!”  He waited until the last echoes had faded before heading back inside.  If he waited long enough, he was sure Pitch would come.

Hours passed with no sign of the boogieman.  Jack was bored.  He drifted through the hall, swinging from bannisters and sliding down his icy creations.  He chipped designs into the sides of the pillars, flipped through some of the books, and finally collapsed, sighing, on the magnificent four-poster bed.

“Maybe I really pissed him off,” he thought aloud, rolling over onto his side.  He felt his eyelids growing heavy.  Sleep seemed promising now.  With a yawn, Jack closed his eyes and drifted off to the sound of his own shallow breathing.

 

In sleep, Jack dreamed.  He soared over an endless snow-bound landscape under a sea of stars.  But there was an urgency to his flight.  He was going somewhere, or fleeing something.  In the dream, he could not turn around and look behind himself.  Beneath, his shadow stretched back and out of sight, a dark stain on the white surface of the world.  He soared lower, until he could almost touch the ground.  His shadow looked back up at him with evil yellow eyes.  It smiled with a mouth full of sharp, crooked teeth.  Impossibly, it reached up and grabbed his wrists, laughing as it pulled him down into the snow.

Jack broke the crust of the icy land, and realized that it was not land, but water beneath the snow.  His shadow dragged him deeper.  Everything was dark.  He could not see; he could not breathe.  He struggled as the weight of water caved his chest in.  His ribs snapped like brittle branches, and blood floated up through the dark water.  His lungs were punctured and filled with fluids.  He was dead or dying, but he could not get out.

Jack woke sobbing and gasping.  He clutched at his chest—whole, unbroken.  With a shudder he wiped the tears from his face.

“What could you be dreaming of, I wonder, that it would leave you in such a state?” a soft voice asked.  Jack jerked backwards violently and realized in his panic that Pitch Black was sitting on the edge of the bed, looking at him with piercing golden eyes.

“It’s none of your business,” Jack snapped, still frightened and disoriented by the vivid nightmare.  He brushed some frozen teardrops from his eyelashes.

“But fear is always my business, Jack,” Pitch responded.  “And if I recall correctly, it was _you_ who called me here.”  He looked around, admiring the young guardian’s architectural prowess.  “Have you decided to leave that little pond behind and live here, in the mountains?  I suppose a guardian needs a palace, doesn’t he?”

Jack shook his head, remembering why he was here and why he had wanted Pitch here too.

“Actually,” he said, coughing to clear the tremors from his voice.  “I didn’t build this place for me.”  Pitch raised an eyebrow.

“Oh?  What is it for, then?”

“It’s for you,” Jack replied.  The look on Pitch’s face was priceless.

“I—  What—“ he stuttered.  Jack smiled, his confidence growing.

“You said that since the nightmares turned on you, you were homeless.  So, I made you a new home.  I didn’t really know what you’d want in it, so I sort of made it up as I went along.  I hope it’s not too bad.”  Pitch just stared at him, completely flabbergasted.

“You,” he said.  “Jack Frost, Guardian of Fun.  Made me, Pitch Black—the boogieman, sworn enemy of the guardians—a _home_?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” Pitch asked, genuinely confused and strangely vulnerable.

“Because everyone needs to belong somewhere,” Jack replied, choosing his words with care.  “Because I don’t believe that we need to be enemies.  Because I think the world needs Pitch Black, even if I don’t think the world should be ruled by fear.”

“How can you know that?” Pitch whispered.

“Because I know that there is something good in you, if you would only take the time to find it,” Jack answered firmly.

Pitch was stunned.  He did not reply.  Jack scooted closer to him.

“I want to help you,” Jack said.  “But I can only do that if you let me.”  Pitch’s vulnerable expression quickly hardened.

“What’s the catch?” he asked, deadpan.  Jack stopped himself before saying ‘no,’ because there was a catch, wasn’t there?

“Let me convince you,” he said.  “Become a guardian.”  Pitch’s face remained cold and unreadable.

“You know what my answer to that will be.”

“Then don’t answer yet,” Jack pleaded.  “Let me help you, however I can.  And maybe you will start to change your mind.”  Pitch looked away, contemplating the young spirit’s words.  Finally, he looked Jack in the eye.

“I accept.”

Jack blinked, pleased and surprised.

“Really?”  Pitch nodded.  Jack smiled; his doubts vanished and he felt strong and sure of his purpose.  He would convince Pitch to become a guardian, and the world would be a better place for it when children could feel safe in the dark.

They sat in silence for a time, each trying to process just what this promise meant.  Jack Frost and Pitch Black, guardian and nightmare, working together?  What could that mean, and what would come of it, in the end?  It was a promise in which Jack could see the possibility of redemption.

And Pitch?  The King of Nightmares looked at the winter spirit’s shining face and saw a second chance of corruption.  He didn’t understand where this sudden compassion had come from, or even really what it meant.  His heart had not truly felt love or kindness in two thousand years.  But he knew that it was a gift that he could not take for granted, or risk losing.  If Jack could be tempted to his side, then his vision of a cold, dark world was not as impossible as it once had been.  He didn’t believe for a moment that Jack could convince him to become a guardian.  He had never been human, or anything but what he was now. 

_Except stronger_ , he reminded himself.  _And I will be strong again_.  Pitch Black smiled a dark and vengeful smile.

“So, what now?” Jack ventured.

“We gather my nightmares, and I reclaim my hold on fear,” Pitch replied.

“So they won’t be running wild?”

“Precisely.”

“And then what?”  Pitch smiled at him, showing off his sharp and crooked teeth.

“And then we remind the children of the world why their parents once taught them to fear the boogieman.”

A flicker of doubt passed through Jack’s mind.  He would keep his eye on Pitch, much the same way an animal trainer would on an untrained tiger.  Pitch was sustained by fear.  Jack knew there was no way to change that, but there had to be a way to use fear in a positive way.  Could fear make one stronger?  Could it protect children?  With a sudden flash of insight, Jack realized that the answer was yes.  The answer had always been yes.  There were countless ways in which fear was integral to keeping children safe.  Perhaps Pitch had once known that, but centuries of thankless work and never-ending fear had twisted him and made him lose sight of what he was supposed to be.

If Jack could show him the constructive uses of fear, perhaps he would not gravitate so strongly to its destructive uses—which, at the moment, seemed to be the only ones he employed.  A little bit of fear is healthy.  A lot of fear is crippling.

This rule did not apply only to Pitch.  Jack knew that a bit of snow and cold was good for a child, but too long in the cold could be harmful, even lethal.  He’d watched more children die of sickness, exposure, and frostbite on a winter’s night than he could begin to count, and each time it had broken his heart that he could not have saved them.  Jack shied away from those dark thoughts and bitter nights from centuries ago, before the world had become safer and warmer for the majority of humanity.

Now was not the time for him to think of his own past.  The future was what mattered, and Jack would ensure that it would be brighter than anything that had ever come before.  If only he could get Pitch to remember that which had once meant the most to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now that I've finally finished my outline for the whole story, I'm letting you guys know that I'm going to eventually boost the rating up to M. Probably not anytime soon, but maybe by the time I reach double digits, things are gonna start escalating fairly quickly.


	5. Moonlight

There was nothing that made Jack happier than children’s smiles.  Seeing children happy and having fun always filled him with a sense of peace.  Whenever he felt sad and whenever he felt doubt, children never failed to lift his spirits.  They were all so new, so excited, so curious, so filled with wonder, and they saw things that adults no longer could.  It was when Jack was with children that he felt certain, down the very core of his being, that his purpose in life was to guard and protect them.  Nothing could be more important than that.

From what Jack had observed, Pitch did not think the same.

They had left the Mountain Hall (as Jack was calling it) almost immediately to start tracking down the nightmares.  It was easy to find them with Pitch.  Fear was his element, after all, and he could sense a child’s fear from the other side of the planet, if he chose to.  (A fact that Jack found creepy, to say the least.)  But it made their work much quicker than Jack had anticipated.

Pitch would sense a nightmare, they would track down the sleeping child it was tormenting, and Pitch would snatch the creature up in his spider-like hand.  With the boogieman’s fingers wrapped tight around the thrashing abominations’ throat, it would burst back into sand.  The sand then flowed into a bag that Pitch kept tied around his waist.  It was this bag that contained the fear and kept it from escaping again.

The sleeping child would calm down when the nightmare was put away, but Pitch would give them this look—sharp and cold—and they would shudder as if they could feel it.  It unsettled Jack.  Although Pitch was gathering the nightmares, he still wanted the children to be afraid.  It was Jack’s job to make him _stop_ wanting that.

“Stop that,” he snapped at Pitch by the eighth child.  “I don’t know what you’re doing, but I don’t like it.”  Pitch looked at him with a raised brow.

“Stop what?  Gathering the nightmares?  I thought that’s what we were here to do.”  Jack scowled.

“No.  After you have the nightmare.  They’re just settling down again, and you look at them or something, and they’re scared again.”

“I’m the boogieman, Jack.  I’m every child’s fear.  That is what my presence inspires in them, nightmare or no nightmare.”

Jack was not convinced.  Pitch sighed.

“Right now, these nightmares are wild fear.  They are random and irrational.  They are the kind of fear that feeds and grows and incites panic.”  He leaned down over the sleeping girl, no more than six or seven.  “What I am doing is replacing that with focused fear, Jack.  Fear of me.”  He stroked the girl’s forehead, and she trembled, whimpering.  Jack felt a hot rage rising in his chest.

“Don’t touch her.”

Pitch snorted softly in amusement and brushed a lock of sweat-damp hair from the girl’s forehead.  Jack was about to speak up again when he saw a tear roll down her pale cheek.  The words died on his tongue, and he saw red.

In a flash, Jack had Pitch pinned to the far wall; Jack’s forearm pressed against the boogieman’s narrow chest.  Pitch said nothing, did nothing.  He hung limp against the wall, waiting.

“Don’t you dare make them cry,” Jack hissed.  “Don’t you hurt them.  Or I will break this truce in an instant, and you will go back down into that pit and spend the rest of your life in a nightmare!  Because if that is what you are going to do to them, then you deserve the same.”  Pitch looked at him passively, his silver-gold eyes unblinking.  Jack let up the pressure he was exerting, and stepped back.  Pitch remained against the wall, watching the frost spirit carefully.

“I did not hurt her, Jack.”

“You made her cry.”

“I am fear.  I cannot change that, and neither can you.  What would you have me do?  If they are not scared of me, I am nothing.  And you of all people know that if a fate worse than death.”

Jack paced around the room angrily, Pitch’s eyes following his every step.  He hadn’t thought it would be this hard.  It had all sounded so good in theory!  Show Pitch he could be a guardian, use fear to protect!  But how could he go about doing that when he couldn’t stand to see children afraid?  He didn’t understand how Pitch could get any pleasure from that.  The thought made him sick.  The sight of Pitch smiling while children were terrified of him made Jack sick.  He wanted to strike Pitch.  He wanted to hurt him for hurting them.  But he was just doing what he was made to do, wasn’t he?  Was that his fault?  Would it be better if Pitch hated every moment of his fear-inducing existence?  Probably not.

“There has to be a better way,” Jack said, more to himself than to Pitch.

“There isn’t.”

“No!” Jack cried, rounding on the boogieman.  “I don’t trust you!  Don’t think for a moment that you’re going to convince me that your way is the only way; because it’s not gonna work!  You pulled that on me once and it didn’t work!  The moment I said ‘no,’ you were pretty quick to hurt me and Baby Tooth!”

Pitch walked over to Jack, pacing around the smaller guardian in a pious manner, his hands clasped behind his back and his gaze sympathetic.

“Sometimes a parent’s actions may seem cruel and unfair to a child, but they are always for the best.”

“You’re no one’s parent,” Jack snapped back at him.  Deep down inside Pitch’s black heart, something stirred—hot and sticky as tar.  He blinked, and it was gone.

“No.  But that doesn’t mean I don’t care.  I _do_ care about children, Jack.  Just not the same way you do.”

The winter spirit’s hard expression faltered.  He was confused.

“What do you mean?” he asked, suspicious.  “You told me that protecting children wasn’t ‘high on your to-do list,’ or did I mishear you?”  Pitch scoffed.

“I said protecting children’s hopes and dreams wasn’t high on my to-do list.  And I meant that.”

“So—”

“Do not,” Pitch interrupted, his gaze piercing, “presume that I care nothing for their safety.  Fear protects, Jack.  Fear keeps children safe in their beds while dangers of which their young minds have no comprehension prowl in the dark.”  The room darkened.  It shuddered and grew smaller while Pitch seemed to grow larger.  “ _Wonder_ would have them leave their beds and wander out into the woods to look at the stars, ignorant of how quickly the cold can still a child’s heartbeat!” Jack stopped breathing as Pitch said this, dread clutching at his heart with icy talons.  “ _Hope_ would have them ignore the present and disregard necessity because they have faith it will all be well.  Children have no mind for the bigger picture, for the consequences of their actions and inactions, or dangers of which they are unaware!  Fear is the only thing that will keep a child safe and ensure they survive to adulthood.”

“The world isn’t as dangerous as it was once,” Jack choked out, overwhelmed by Pitch’s outburst.  “Their parents keep them safe.”

“Parents,” Pitch scoffed, with an unusual amount of hostility.  “What does a parent really know?  Half of them stumble through the day, unaware of what their children are doing or where they are going.  The world is hardly safer now than it was five hundred years ago.  Do you know how easy it is to kidnap a child from their bus stop or playground?  How easy it is to overlook them when driving around a corner just a little too fast?   How easy it is to forget to lock the drawer with daddy’s gun so little Sammy or Suzie doesn’t find it and blow their brains out?  Parents are selfish and ignorant!”

Now Jack was afraid.  Pitch loomed over him, filling the shadows of the small room.  It made Jack feel small and helpless when the boogieman did this, but he fought down his fear and glared up at Pitch.

“Being afraid of everything just makes you miserable!  It doesn’t help!  What kind of life is that when you’re too afraid to leave your house?”

“But it _is_ life!” Pitch insisted.  “And a cautious, fearful life is better than early death!  Wonder and dreams and fun don’t last!  They can’t.  Why do you think adults cannot see the guardians?  Why do you think your protection is limited to the young?  The world is a dark, dangerous, unforgiving place!  It cares nothing for children, nothing for innocence, or goodness, or beautiful things.”  There was a horrible, dark sadness in Pitch’s eyes—a razor edge between terror and resignation.  “Time strips childhood from people because it cannot be sustained!  They must learn to survive or be crushed by a reality they are not prepared to face.”

Jack slid down the wall.  Every word Pitch said was like a hammer blow to his chest.  It sounded like a painful truth, but Jack didn’t want to believe any of it.  Yet, the seed of doubt was twisting its roots down into the muscle of his heart.

“Every child who loves you now will forget you before long.  They will have troubles and joys that no longer include childhood fantasy.  That is all you will be them, in the end.  A dream and a fantasy.  But when I was strong, everyone could see me, because adults know fear more keenly than children do.  All things that live know me.  All things feel fear, in some shape.  I will grow strong again, with or without your help.  I do not need your pity.  I do not need your companionship.  And I will not become a guardian because what you stand for is a delusion, and what I stand for is reality.”

The darkness receded, and Pitch stood in the middle of the room, calm and unthreatening.

“Go home, Jack Frost.  This was never going to work, and I think we both know that.”

Jack’s voice was stuck in his throat.  He wanted—needed—to say something.  Anything.  But he could not, and swift as a shadow, Pitch vanished into the night and Jack was left alone.

After a time, he got up, and walked over to the sleeping girl—trapped in her own nightmare.  Jack stroked her cheek, whispering sweet promises into the fear-sticky air.  Gradually her tremors ceased, and her sleep became peaceful.  Jack smiled sadly.  It seemed that no matter how hard he tried to understand Pitch, he always ended up saying just the wrong things and sending the other spirit into rage.  He did understand where Pitch was coming from, but the depth of his despair and hopelessness was soul-crushing.  What a terrible life that must be, to believe with every fibre of your immortal being that the only things that will always be with you are pain and fear.

 

Later that night, Jack sat on the surface of his pond.  It was nearly May now, but as long as Jack was there, the ice would not melt.  He would have to leave soon, but not yet.  He wasn’t ready to leave his home behind.  It gave him comfort.

Jack didn’t want to give up on Pitch.  He did believe that at his heart was something worthwhile, but it was buried much deeper than he had thought.  So deep that even Pitch was unaware of its existence.  Now it was clear to Jack that just talking to Pitch would not be enough, and just the guardian’s (hopefully) benign presence was not going to change millennia of loneliness and terror into something positive.  He had to find out more about Pitch’s past.

“But how?” he whispered to himself.  Baby Tooth poked her head out of his pocket again.  She disliked Pitch, and had kept hidden since he had appeared, but she had heard all that passed between them.  Twittering softly, she patted the back of Jack’s hand.  “No one knows anything.  Not Tooth or Sandy or North.  Not even Pitch knows who he was before.”

Jack looked up at the moon, shining bright onto the surface of the ice.

“Do you know?” Jack asked.  “Did you put him here, like you put me here?  Like you asked the others to be here?  Am I doing the right thing, trying to get him to become a guardian?”

Silence.

Jack frowned.  “Even now, you still won’t talk to me?  You talk to all the others, why not me?  I’m a guardian, aren’t I?”

Silence.

Jack sighed, closing his eyes and letting his head hang forward.  He heard Baby Tooth twitter excitedly, but he didn’t open his eyes.  She tugged on his hoody, and he cracked an eyelid.  Both eyes opened wide at what he saw.

The entire surface of the lake was glowing white.  Jack scrambled to his feet, staring down at it, then up at the moon, then back down.

“What?  The ice?  What does that mean?  How can that help me make him remember?  Remember…”

Suddenly, a memory inserted itself behind Jack’s eyes.  The night of Pitch’s defeat.  Tooth, furious.  Her fist colliding with Pitch’s jaw.  A single tooth, clattering against the ice.  This ice.

Jack gasped, looking down.

“It was here!  It’s always here!”  He took his staff and stuck the ice until it caved and cracked.  Water pooled up on top of it, shimmering in the strong moonlight.  Jack let his staff clatter to the ground.  He stared down at the cracked ice and gathered up every ounce of courage he had.

“Stay here, Baby Tooth,” he whispered, and stepped forward.  The ice gave out and Jack plunged into the very same water which, three hundred years before, had sucked the air from his lungs and the warmth from his blood.

It was dark in the water, but the moon lit his way.  Jack would not drown.  He hadn’t needed air to live in three hundred years.  He hadn’t had a pulse since the day it stopped.  But it was dark.  Even with the moonlight, the water was murky.  Jack dug his feet into the cold mud, feeling it squelch between his toes.  He searched around, and then he saw it—a dark blot in the cloudy light.  He stumbled towards it, pushing himself forward with his arms and legs, but never quite swimming because he had never learned.

Down in the mud, a knot of darkness writhed.  Jack waved at the darkness, and the black tendrils twisted away and dissipated like smoke into the water.  In the mud lay a single tooth, and Jack picked it up gently.  He kicked off the ground, groping for the surface.  His head hit the underside of the ice with a dull thunk.  Concentrating, Jack pushed through it, and the ice splintered apart.  Gasping instinctually, Jack pulled himself back onto the surface of ice and lay there, soaked to the bone with Pitch’s tooth clasped tightly in his hand.

“Ah!”  A sharp pain in his palm made Jack uncurl his fingers.  There was blood on the tooth and on his palm.  “Did you just bite me?” he whispered to the tooth.  It lay in his palm innocently, but for the blood smeared across its ridges.

Baby Tooth fluttered over, twittering worriedly.

“Look, Baby Tooth,” Jack said, showing her the tooth.  “I did it.  I found Pitch’s tooth.  Now… now I can find out who he was before!”

Baby Tooth fluttered closer, cautiously.  When she saw the tooth, she let out a shrill cry, swooping over to hide behind Jack’s hood.

“What?  What’s wrong?”  Jack asked.

Baby Tooth squeaked.

“The tooth is wrong?” Jack interpreted.  He looked back at the tooth, and bounced it in his palm a few times.  “What do you mean?”

Baby Tooth shook her head.  Jack huffed.

“Well, it is _Pitch’s_ tooth.  I don’t think his memories are gonna be fun to see, but I need to know.  I’ll never be able to convince him otherwise, and a repeat of last year won’t help anyone.”  Baby Tooth tweeted softly, hiding in Jack’s hood.  He sat up, shook the water from his hair, and popped the tooth into his pocket.

“Let’s go find Tooth,” he said, and leapt into the air.  “She’ll be able to help.”  Somehow, Baby Tooth was not so sure.


	6. Drowning

Jack flew to Tooth’s palace as quickly as the wind could carry him.  He was anxious and impatient.  A sense of urgency pushed him forward, pushed him faster.  He rubbed at his right palm—the one that had been punctured by Pitch’s tooth.  It was strange that it still hurt, but Jack had more pressing concerns and didn’t think much of it.  Punjam Hy Loo was within sight.

Toothiana was overseeing her fairies as Jack came whistling in—so fast that he stumbled as he tried to land and pitched forward over the other side of the platform.  Before Tooth could fly over and make sure he was okay, he’d popped back up and landed gingerly in front of her.  There was a wild excitement in his eyes.

“I did it, Tooth!” he cried.  “I found Pitch’s tooth!”  Toothiana’s wings missed a beat.

“What?” she exclaimed.

Jack reached into his pocket and withdrew the tooth, proffering it up to her.  She eyed it warily.

“It was the tooth he lost when you hit him last year!  It was in the bottom of my pond the whole time!”

“Put that down, Jack,” Toothiana said sharply.  Jack’s grin faltered.

“What?”

“Put it down!”

Uncertainly, Jack did as he was told.  He knelt down and carefully let the tooth slide from his palm and onto the surface of the platform.  Toothiana fluttered over to him, tugging him away from it.  The tooth lay on the tile, innocent and immobile.

“I don’t understand,” Jack said, looking up at her.  “Why are you so freaked out?  Baby Tooth did the same thing.”  On cue, the tiny fairy abandoned Jack’s hood to hover by Toothiana’s face, gesticulating wildly.

“Jack, that tooth is rotten,” she whispered.  Jack looked back over at it.

“It looks fine to me.”  Tooth shook her head.

“No, I mean the memories inside it are rotten.”  Her face twisted up in revulsion.  “I can feel them, twisting around.  They’re bad, Jack.  They’re very, very bad.”

“They’re Pitch’s memories.”

“Yes.”

“Can you show them to me?” he asked.  Toothiana’s eyes widened with horror.

“No!” she exclaimed, shaking her head madly.  “Brahman, no.  Never.”

“You mean you can’t, or you won’t?” Jack asked accusingly.

“I don’t know if I can, and if I could, I wouldn’t,” she clarified.  Jack frowned.

“Why not?”

“Firstly,” she said, “memories are very personal things.  They are not meant to be shared or seen by those that were not there.  Secondly, the memories I guard are those of childhood—the most beautiful and important memories of childhood, the ones that give strength.  This is not a child’s tooth.  This is a monster’s tooth and it has a monster’s memories.  They are dark, evil, and cold, and I am afraid of what they would do to you.”

“Well, I’m not,” Jack replied, almost surprised that he was being complete sincere.  He wasn’t afraid of Pitch’s memories.  He wasn’t afraid of Pitch.  But he was afraid of failing.  “I need to know how Pitch became what he is.  I can’t do anything until I know that.  I can’t help him.  I can’t help anyone.”  Tooth shook her head fiercely.

“I won’t help you destroy yourself.”

“Destroy myself?” Jack exclaimed.  “What is it you think I’m trying to do?  What aren’t you telling me?  This whole time, ever since I went to go see North a couple weeks ago, I feel like you’ve all been hiding things from me!”

“We’re not hiding things from you, Jack.”

“Oh?” Jack cried, his temper rising.  “Then why didn’t any of you tell me that Pitch was asked to be a guardian?  Why didn’t you tell me he used to be a hero, a long time ago?  If he’s the sworn enemy of the guardians, if you’ve been fighting him and what he stands for ever since you all became what you are, why does no one seem to know where he came from or who he was?  Why doesn’t anyone want me to find out?  And why, in God’s name, is shadow summoning such a terrible thing?  I have _never_ seen Sandy so upset as when I mentioned that to him!”

Jack glared at Tooth, hoping to pry answers from her with stubbornness and rage, but his resolve crumbled when he saw her face.  She looked like she was about to cry.  Jack mentally kicked himself for letting his frustration get the best of him.

“Tooth.  Tooth, I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to—”

“No.  It’s okay,” she said, which just made Jack feel worse.

“It’s not okay.  I shouldn’t have shouted.  I’m sorry.”  Jack sat down and drew his knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them.  He stared at the tooth, small and grey on the brightly coloured tiles.  Toothiana knelt down in front of him.  She reached out and touched his cheek, drawing his eyes back to her.

“What we keep from you,” she said softly, “we do to keep you safe.  Sometimes the truth is painful, Jack.  Sometimes it does more harm than good.”

“And sometimes hiding the truth is worse for everyone,” Jack said, looking her in the eye.  “I want to make the world a better place.  I want to keep kids safe and I want them to be happy.  Fighting Pitch and keeping him weak doesn’t solve the problem, it just gives us more time until the next big fight.”

“Some problems can’t be solved.”

“I won’t know unless I try.”

“And if you fail?”

“Then I fail,” Jack said simply.  “And we go back to the way things were.  We fight Pitch.  We keep him from hurting anyone, no matter what price he has to pay.”

“I don’t want you to get hurt,” Toothiana said softly.  Jack laughed bitterly.  It was a strange and unsettling sound.

“I’m already dead, Tooth.  What could hurt me?”

There was confusion and fear in her amethyst eyes.  Jack reached out and took her hand, delicate and warm in his numb fingers.  He placed it against his chest and covered it with his own.  He closed his eyes and waited.

“You have no heartbeat,” she whispered, after a long moment.

“To save my sister, I took her place on thin ice, and drowned.  That’s why I was chosen.  I guess that makes me a ghost, doesn’t it?”  Jack cracked a smile to hide how scared he was.  How scared he was of how Tooth would react.  How scared he was every time he thought about what he was and what that meant.

“Oh, Jack,” Tooth murmured.  “You don’t know what you’re asking of me.”

“Maybe I don’t.  But this is something I have to do.  I have to see those memories.”

“The memories in that tooth are not natural, and they are not benign,” said Tooth.  “They’re full of rage and pain, and they’re trying to get out.  Memories don’t _do_ that, Jack.  I’ve never seen something this horrible before.  They _want_ to be seen.  They want to get _out_.  It’s almost as if they have their own consciousness.”  She paused for a moment, thinking.  “You said the tooth was in your pond for the past year?”

Jack nodded.

“And you spend a lot of time there?”

“Yes.  Why?”  Toothiana looked deeply troubled.

“Jack I think that tooth is the reason you’ve been having nightmares.”  Jack blinked.

“What?  Really?”

“Yes.  There’s something very dark and very bad in there.  The memories inside it are powerful.  I think they’ve been influencing your dreams.”

“But I had a nightmare at North’s too.”  Tooth shook her head.

“Doesn’t  matter.  You were with it long enough.  There is a connection between you and Pitch.  It’s pulling at you.”

“You’ve said that before.”

“This is different.  What I meant before was that you understood him better than the rest of us, even though we’ve all had our share of tragedies.  This is deeper, more personal.  I don’t like it, Jack.  I don’t want him to pull you down.”  Jack seemed far less concerned about this than perhaps he should have been.

“If there’s a connection, that means I can see the memories, right?  It is possible.”

“Yes.  I think so,” Tooth admitted reluctantly.

“You have to show me.”

“Jack, I can’t.”  There were tears on her face.  Jack brushed them away, pleading.

“I’ll be okay,” he insisted.  “I’m tough.  And stubborn.”  Toothiana chuckled, wiping her face.

“You’re sweet.  And you’re compassionate.  And I’m afraid that if you see those memories, that could be your undoing.”

“There’s no ‘if’ anymore, Tooth.  I’m not going to rest until I find out what’s in that tooth.  What I see might hurt me, but if you’re here with me, that will give me strength.”  He smiled at her, and she smiled weakly back.

“Alright,” she said, after a long pause.  “I’ll show them to you.  Go get the tooth.”

She stayed on her knees while Jack got up to fetch the tooth.  He felt nervous as he picked it up.  It seemed so small and harmless.  He was glad he could not feel its darkness the way Toothiana could.  He thought that, if he could, he might not be able to go through with this.

Jack sat back down in front of Toothiana with the tooth lying in his outstretched palm.  Gingerly, she closed his fingers around it and covered his hand with her own.

“Close your eyes,” she whispered.

Jack did as he was told.

“Now, you are at a door.  It’s tall and dark and it’s locked.  The key is in your hand.  Unlock the door.”

In his mind, Jack did this.

“Now, open the door.”

Jack did so.

“It’s still dark,” he said.  “I don’t think this is working.”

“Shush.  Keep going.”

Jack did as he was told, feeling sillier as nothing continued to happen.

“Daddy!”

“What?”

“Jack, you have to concentrate.”

“Did you say that?”

“Yes, now concentrate.”

“No, did you call me ‘Daddy?’” Jack asked.

There was no response.

“Tooth?  Tooth, are you listening to me?”

Jack opened his eyes.

He was at the Tooth Palace no longer.

He was in a garden.  If a garden could have grass that sparkled like powdered gold and flowers that looked like they had been wrought from liquid gemstones and twisted through with moonlight.  The air around him seemed to glow and hum.  The perfume of a hundred different flowers drifted in a haze through his mind.  When he looked up, he did not see blue skies or clouds, but a night sky so bright and filled with stars that he had though it daylight.

Before Jack could examine his surroundings further, someone rushed passed him, laughing.  It was a young girl.  Her raven hair streamed out behind her and her white lace dress billowed as she ran.  On the far side of the garden, a man had his back to them, examining the flowers.  He stood straight and proper with his hands clasped tight behind his back.  The gold tassels on his navy blue uniform gleamed in the starlight.

“Daddy!” the girl cried as she ran toward him.

The man turned, and Jack’s breath caught in his throat when he saw his face.  It was Pitch.  It could be no one else.  And yet this could not be Pitch.  His skin was flesh-coloured, not grey, though his hair was still as black as jet.  There was a smile on his face and a warmth in his golden eyes that Jack had never seen in Pitch’s.

“There’s my little flower!” he laughed, scooping the girl up and spinning her around.  Her joyful cries filled the air. 

Jack felt like he was intruding on something personal and private, but he was drawn forward regardless.  He took a step forward, and a spike of joy shot through his heart.  He smiled, though he did not know why he felt so happy, and then the ground fell out from beneath him.

Images flashed through his mind, and yet they were also around him.  He knew that he was seeing Pitch’s memories—that he existed in them as a spectre—and yet somehow, they were also _his_ memories now.  He could feel Pitch’s joy, could remember as he remembered, and knew things as one can know only in dreams—the true nature of a thing beneath the deceptions of sight and sound.

He knew that the man who was Pitch and yet not was called Kozmotis Pitchiner, and that he had known great loss and hardship.  He knew that the girl with the raven hair was his daughter.  He knew that joyful afternoon in the gardens of Tsar Lunar’s palace was the last day he could spend with his daughter for a long time.

Kozmotis Pitchiner was a man at war with the dark itself.

As Jack fell through starlight and twilight and darkness and silence, he could feel the boundaries between himself and Kozmotis breaking down.  As the memories became his own, he became Kozmotis.

And he remembered.

He remembered many things.

Each as raw and real and present as the days they had occurred, countless centuries ago.

A woman with no face holds his hand and he knows that this was his wife, and that he must have loved her with all his heart.  The abyss from which all fear and darkness came had taken her, and swallowed all memory of her existence.  She was a gap in his memory, and he only knew that she had been his wife because there was a ring on his finger and a daughter in his arms.  But her name and face were lost to all who might have known her.

For that is what fear does.  It consumes.  It blots out past and future.  It creates only now, only panic, only pain.  The creatures that poured forth from the dark ravaged the good places of the universe.  Fearlings and Dream Pirates and Nightmare Men—nameless, formless monsters from the gap between the universe’s end and its beginning.

Kozmotis stands before the Tsar and Tsarina, rulers of the Constellation Lunaris.  The Tsar had been his boyhood friend, and Kozmotis would serve him to his dying day.  He kneels before them and feels the tap of celestial steel against his shoulder.  He stands, knighted, the high general of the Golden Armies.  Pride, and the great weight of responsibility, fill his soul.  And with them, the pain of loss and separation.  To do this he will have to leave his daughter all alone.  The Tsar promised he will care for her and watch over her.

She is only six years old.

Scenes of battle flashed before Jack’s eyes.  He feels the weight of his giant scythe in his hand.  It was forged in the heart of a white dwarf star, and slices through worms as tall as the great solar cities.  They come in droves and swarms.  Beasts with black feathers, fur, and scales, sticky with tar-like ooze, scream in the vacuum of space.

The Pookas, a warrior race of giant rabbits, fight at his army’s side.  They are fierce and loyal and old as the stars that light the heavens.  His most trusted friend, Jericho, numbers among their ranks.

Day by empty day, he and his armies beat back the forces of the dark and trap each writhing ghost in a prison made of tempered lead.  Many fall to fear and death, and Kozmotis himself bears scars that will never heal—the worst of which lies upon his back—a purple brand in the shape of a clawed human hand.  The mark of the terror that almost torn his spine from his body.

Pain.  Fear.  Exhaustion.

Jack feels all these things as if they are his own.  Every loss breaks his heart.  Every victory gives him strength.  And one day, the last of the monsters fall, and the war to save the Golden Age has been won.

His daughter is there again and Jack is dancing with her in a ballroom spun from diamonds and stardust.

“My little flower.”  Kozmotis’ voice echoes from his mouth.  “My Seraphina.”

Sorrow falls again.  The monsters cannot drift unguarded.  There must be a warden for the prison.

Kozmotis volunteers himself, and to the Tsar’s pain, he allows it.  Only an incorruptible man could stand to keep watch over all the evil in the universe and not succumb to it.

But no one is incorruptible.

Even the kindest, bravest, and strongest of men has a weakness.  Even Kozmotis has a breaking point.

He guards the beasts, day and night, for years without end.  A locket around his neck holds his daughter’s image.  It gives him courage, like a light in dark.  He hears her laughter in the silence.  He has not seen her in person for many years, though they write letters to each other often.  She is growing up, and he has not been there for it.

In the dark, he sits, and the monsters whisper to him.  Dark things.  Terrible things.

He has learned to ignore them.

They do not like to be ignored.

So, one day, they try something new.

Kozmotis sits at his desk, the fearlings hissing in their cages.  Suddenly, a voice calls out.  It is a voice that he recognizes, and hearing it here fills him with a sickening dread.

“Daddy.  Daddy, help.”

Kozmotis bolts to his feet—heart racing, eyes wild.  His daughter.  His daughter, here?

“Daddy, I’m trapped.  Please, I’m so scared.  Let me out.”

Time slows.  Seconds drip like hot wax from a candle.  Drawn by a wild fear for his daughter’s safety, Kozmotis follows the sound of her voice.  In its prison, the darkness shifts and churns like boiling water.

“Daddy!  Help me!”

Paralyzed, Kozmotis watches as the darkness takes his daughter’s shape.  She is the little girl he left behind so many years ago, and some rational part of his mind screams that the creature behind bars is not his daughter—safe at home, nearly grown up now.

But love and fear are not rational things, and the darkness twists and twists at Kozmotis’ tired heart.

“Daddy, I’m so scared!” she sobs.  “Don’t leave me here!”

“No, no,” he whispers, as the thing that cannot be his daughter reaches a trembling hand toward him from inside the frothing darkness.  He reaches his hand out, desperate to feel his daughter’s touch.

“No!”

He pulls it back, willing himself to stay strong.  The phantom hand of his daughter retreats.

And then the screaming starts.

It is the sound of his only daughter—the light and joy of his life—in unfathomable pain.

Kozmotis is a father.

She is his world, and he would give his life to keep her safe.

Tears stream down his gaunt face as his daughter’s cries of agony and terror fill his ears.  They blot out reason.  They shred through caution.  They swallow up past and future.

A small part of him knows that this is a trick, but the rest of him doesn’t care anymore.  He can’t bear to hear his daughter’s screams.  He can’t stay here another moment.  He can’t leave her to be torn apart by the darkness.  He will not lose her like he once lost his wife, and be left without even memories.  He would rather suffer an eternity of damnation than watch her be taken from him.

Entranced, Kozmotis unlocks the door.  In a howling rush, the creatures are free.  They engulf him, surround him, and burrow deep inside him.  Kozmotis screams the scream of a man who has lost everything—who, when friendship and family mattered most, found himself alone.

The darkness bites and claws and devours.

His agony is beyond speech and sound.  The fear of the dark is all-consuming; it rips his soul apart and eats it piece by piece.

Caught in throes of paralyzing agony, Jack feels Kozmotis’ endless pain.  It is _his_ pain now.  He is the man who lost his wife, his daughter, and now himself to the darkness that preys on the frailty in each of us.  Jack feels the darkness rip his heart out and fill his soul with tar.

 

There is nothing but darkness now.

 

Fear is omnipresent; the cold chills from him deep inside.

 

There is nothing left.

 

Not love.  Not sorrow.  Not memory.  Not hope.

 

There is nothing but the cold, empty, dark and a deep, mindless hunger.

 

.

..

 

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_I am fear._

_I am the dark._

 

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..

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And it will never end.

 

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..

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_I am hungry._


	7. Consequences

 

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_Jack…_

 

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Who are you?

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…

_Jack._

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..

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Who is Jack?

_._

_._

_._

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_…_

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_JACK.  JACK._

 

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Stop.

 

 

 

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_JACK JACK JACK_

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StOp It.

 

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_JACK._

 

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Too loud.  Too LOUD _._

..

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_Come back to me._

_……………………_

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…...

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“Jack!  Jack!”

Slowly, agonizingly, Jack was pulled back into himself by the sound of his name.  The shadows clung to his mind like cobwebs, but he struggled and pulled at them.  _Jack.  Yes.  I am Jack.  Not Kozmotis.  Jack._

“Oh, Jack,” Tooth sobbed, as reality took shape around him.  “I thought I’d lost you.”

Jack could not speak.  There was too much inside his head—too much pain and heartbreak and suffering.  Spasms gripped his chest, and he began to weep uncontrollably.  Tooth cradled him in her arms as he sobbed big gulping breaths, his face soaked with tears.

They stayed like that for a long time.  The tiny fairies clustered around them, distressed by Jack and Toothiana’s pain.  They sang softly, trying to offer comfort, but Jack had seen horror beyond his darkest imagination and it had left him weak and shell-shocked.

Toothiana stroked his cheek, and he felt his eyelids grow heavy.  Oblivion could offer peace.

Jack drifted away from pain and sorrow into empty dreaming.  There would be no good dreams here tonight, but his mind was too ravaged for nightmares.

He was frighteningly light in Toothiana’s arms, and as she moved to hold him more securely, she realized that the hand in which he’d held the tooth was still balled into a tight fist.  Blood dripped slowly from between his fingers.

Carefully, she pried his hand open, and was horrified by what she found.

Pitch’s tooth was nearly imbedded in the boy’s blood-smeared palm.  It had to be removed, but she dared not touch it.  Quickly, she gathered him up in her arms and took to the air.  She was afraid that he had been damaged beyond repair, and that it was all her fault for showing him what should not have been his to see.

 

_Seraphina._

Jack awoke with that name on his lips and the salt of his own tears on his tongue.  He coughed and sat up, head throbbing and ravenously thirsty.

“You are awake.”

Jack looked over to see North sitting in a chair beside him.  He was at the North Pole, he realized.  In a bed.

“Water,” he rasped.  North got up to fetch him a glass, and when he returned Jack accepted it gratefully, downing it without pausing to breathe.

“How are you feeling?” North asked.

“Kind of like I lost a fight,” Jack rasped out, half-joking.

“Is very good thing you didn’t,” North replied, without humour.  Jack looked away, rubbing his right palm absently beneath the covers.

“I saw Pitch’s memories,” he confessed.

“I know,” North said.  “Tooth told me.  What you did was reckless and dangerous.”  Jack turned back to North.  The older guardian’s expression was stern and concerned.  Jack swallowed.

“I know.  I know,” he said.  “But I _had_ to know.  And god, North, I didn’t just _see_ his memories.  I was _there_.  They were _my_ memories.  Everything he saw and felt and knew, I got all of it.”

“That is the danger with seeing another person’s memories, Jack.  They can pull you in and make you forget who you are.  Bad memories worst of all.  Is miracle you are still with us.”

“I wouldn’t be, if not for Tooth,” Jack said softly.  “I heard her calling me.  It was so dark, North.  So cold.  I didn’t think I could feel cold anymore, but I did when I was in there.”  Jack shivered at the memory.

There was a thumping outside the room, and the sound of Yeti babble.  Jack turned to look at the door just as a furious Bunnymund burst in.  He stood in the doorway for a moment with a look of relief on his face, before storming over to Jack’s beside and pointing a finger (paw?) at him accusingly.

“You!  You… bloody Galah!”  Jack gave him his most innocent smile.

“Hi, Bunny.”

Bunnymund threw his arms up in the air and turned to look at North.

“Has he lost it?”  He turned back to Jack.  “Ya could have gotten yourself killed!  What were you thinking, mate?  Messing with that fruit loop’s memories?”  His fury faded, and he looked helpless for a moment.  Jack felt a stab of guilt for worrying his friends.

“I’m sorry, Bunny.  I had to know.”

“Ya could have at least told me what was going on!  Why am I always the last to know, eh?”

“I figured you were busy with Easter stuff.”

“Easter was last week, mate.  Ain’t any busier than anyone else.”  Jack looked down, rubbing at his palm again.  Suddenly, he realized there was cloth wrapped around it.  He pulled his hands out from beneath the covers to look at them.  His right hand was covered in bandages.

“When Toothy brought you here, Pitch’s tooth was in your hand.  I had to remove it with my tools,” North told him.  Jack nodded, still staring at his right hand.  Something didn’t feel right.

“Where is it now?” he asked.  North and Bunny shared a raised eyebrow at Jack’s single-minded concern for the thing that had nearly pushed him past the edge of salvation.

“In lead box in my workshop,” North answered.  Jack nodded.

“Yeah.  Lead.  Lead contains the nightmares,” he murmured.

“How did you know that?” Bunny asked.  Jack looked up at him.

“I saw it.  I saw a lot of things.”  He scrutinized Bunny carefully.  “You’re not a bunny, are you?”  Bunnymund looked offended.

“Don’t you start that kangaroo shit again.”  Jack shook his head.

“No, no.  You’re…a Pooka, aren’t you?”  Bunny’s eyes went wide.  He paused for a moment, gaping at Jack.

“How…?”

“I told you, I saw it.”  Jack looked up at the ceiling, lost in thought.  “He was a soldier.  Pitch.  A general.  His best friend was a Pooka named Jericho.”  His eyes clouded over.  “I wonder what happened to him…”

“He’s probably dead, mate.”  Jack snapped from his reverie and turned back to Bunny.

“Well, now, yeah.  It was a very long time ago.”  Bunny shook his head.

“Pookas live as long as stars.  I didn’t need to become a guardian to be nearly immortal.”

“Then what—”

“They died,” Bunny interjected.  “All the Pookas.  I’m the only one left.”

“Oh, Bunny.  I’m sorry.”  Bunny shrugged.

“I’ve had a couple thousand years to come to terms with it.”  Jack looked at his fellow guardian with newfound sympathy and kinship.  He’d though he’d been the only one to understand loneliness, but the more he learned about his friends, the more he felt foolish.  They had all been alone, at one time or another.

_Seraphina._

Jack wrapped his arms around his chest and bowed his head.  There was a deep, yearning sorrow in his heart.  And it felt wrong, because it should not have been his.  He saw that now.  He hadn’t understood what Tooth had been trying to warn him of, but now he did.  Now he understood many things that he wished he did not.

He felt warmth against his shoulder, and looked up to see that Bunny had put a comforting paw on him.  Jack smiled weakly at his friend.  Bunny did not look reassured.

“Are you gonna be okay, mate?  You don’t look so good.”

“Yeah, yeah.  I’m fine.  I just—ah!” he exclaimed as a spike of pain shot through his bandaged hand and up his arm.  He cradled the limb in front of him, pressing his left thumb down on the centre of his opposite palm.  North stood up and walked over to them.  He took Jack’s injured hand and untied the wrappings.  They fell from his hand like the coils of a snake.

“Strewth, Jack.” Bunny whispered, eyes wide.  Jack hardly heard him.  He was transfixed by what he saw.

In the centre of his right palm—where Pitch’s tooth had first cut him, and then sunk itself in during his memory fits—there was bloodless hole.  It was small, half the size of his smallest fingernail, but inside it he could not see pink flesh. 

It was black.  As black as ink at the bottom of a well.  As black as a barn owl’s eye on a moonless, foggy night.  As black as the dark heart of the universe, where stars are crushed into nothing by their own unbearable mass.

And it was spreading.

From where the tooth had punctured him, a dark stain had sunk into his skin.  It fanned out in delicate spider webs across his palm.  Jack realized, with horror, that they were his veins.

“North, what’s happening?” he gasped, suddenly afraid.  His hand throbbed with pain, and if Jack wasn’t mistaken, the stain grew fractionally larger and darker.

“Something very, very bad,” the older guardian answered.  He turned to Bunny.  “Watch him.”  Bunny nodded, and then North left.  Jack sat in the bed, trembling.

“Bunny, I’m scared,” he whispered.

“She’ll be right, mate,” Bunny told him, patting his back comfortingly.  “She’ll be right.  Whatever Pitch has done to you, we’ll fix it.”

Part of Jack wanted to defend Pitch when he heard that.  It wasn’t _his_ fault this was happening.  _He’d_ had nothing to do with it.  Whatever was happening, it was Jack’s own fault for exposing himself to it.  And what was ‘it,’ exactly?

Jack was only just beginning to understand what North had meant when he’d said there were things older and worse than Pitch out there.  They were the very things that had tormented a kind and honest man until he could take no more, used his love and compassion against him, and carved out everything good and beautiful inside him.  Whatever was turning his hand black—whatever had still been left inside that tooth—it was the very thing that had turned Pitch into a creature of darkness.

And now it was in Jack.

The door slammed open, and North re-entered the room.  He put a small lead box down on the table beside Jack’s bed and flipped the lid open.  With a tiny pair of silver tongs, he lifted the tooth from the box and showed it to Jack.

“I am afraid that when I pulled tooth from your hand, I did not get all of it.”  Jack looked at the tooth carefully, and realized that the very point of it had broken off.  “There is still piece inside you, and it is like poison.”

“Can you get it out?”

“I will try.”

North worked quickly, and within minutes he had a table laid across Jack’s bed and surgical tools lined up.  He strapped Jack’s arm to the table (so that he could not move it out of reflex) and turned to him.

“Will you be needing anaesthetic?”  Jack shrugged.

“I don’t think it would work.”  He had no pulse, after all.

North nodded, and carefully, he got to work.  Jack wondered how he could manage such delicate work with such large hands, but he remembered the fine details on North’s toys and models, and decided that if anyone could work carefully, it would be him.

When the scalpel touched his skin, pain flashed white and hot behind Jack’s eyes.  His arm jerked, but was kept in place by the strap.  North looked at him, concerned.  Jack clenched his teeth and nodded for him to continue.  As the metal bit into his flesh, his agony tripled.  Jack closed his eyes, focusing on breathing in and out.  He felt the scalpel leave and then something sharp stick down straight into his open wound.  He gasped, eyes opening, to see that North was searching for the fragment with a delicate pair of tweezers.

They brushed against something in Jack’s hand, and suddenly his veins were on _fire_.  Jack screamed, surprising himself and the other two guardians.  God, there was _boiling water_ in his veins.  It was _burning_ him.  Would he melt?  Burn up like a dead leaf?  Tears rolled down his cheeks.

“Christ, North.  Stop it!” Bunny cried.  North removed the tweezers, and Jack felt the pain ebb and the fire cool.  He collapsed against the pillow, boneless and panting.  His tears left frosted streaks down the sides of his face.

“It does not want to leave,” North said, deeply troubled.  Jack struggle to sit back up, and looked down at his hand.  The blackness in his veins had crept all the way down to his wrist.

“It’s moving,” he whispered, as North freed his arm.  The older guardian nodded.

“I do not think it can be removed by conventional means.  We will have to find another way.”

“How?”

“I will do research.”  Jack looked at his palm again and flexed his fingers to reassure himself that it was still, in fact, his hand.

“What is happening to me?” Jack asked.  He didn’t want this.  He’d never wanted this.  He cursed his curiosity and his compassion.  He’d felt sorry for Pitch.  He’d felt _responsible_.  And this was the consequence of his actions.  North sighed, his startlingly blue eyes betraying just how much he cared for the winter boy.

“You have been poisoned by Pitch’s tooth.  The darkness from his memories is inside you now, and it will spread until it reaches your heart.”  He pushed a finger gently against Jack’s chest.

“What will happen then?” Jack asked, unable to stop himself.  Somehow, he already knew the answer.

“You will become like Pitch,” North told him.  “Or worse.”

“How long do I have?”

“Months.  Weeks.  I cannot say.  It retaliates if we try to remove it, and it will feed on the darkness inside you.  If you wish to gain more time, do not let yourself feel that darkness.”

Jack could have laughed.  Not let himself feel any darkness?  With Pitch’s memories inside him?  The sorrow in his heart was crushing.  He longed bitterly for the return of a daughter who was not his.  The gravity of Pitch’s thoughts and emotions was startling and alien to him.  At his heart, Jack was still a child, and he had spent three hundred years not knowing what it’s like to love someone and lose them.  He’d had _no one_.  Even when his own memories had been returned, they had not been all his memories, only a few.  And while those few were vivid, they paled in intensity beside Pitch’s.  The strength of his pain was greater than the strength of Jack’s joy.

“What can I do?” he whispered to himself.  North sat on the end of the bed.

“Do you still wish to go through with your plan?  Do you still wish to help Pitch regain his memories?”  Jack nodded.

“How can I not?  Especially now that I know…what he lost.”  Jack paused a moment.  “He had a daughter, and she was taken from him.”

“Pitch had a daughter?”  Bunny asked.  Jack nodded, wiping the remnants of his tears from his face.

“Yeah.  And she…she was _everything_ to him.  That’s how they got in.  The monsters.  It hurt so much…”

“Hush, mate,” Bunny told him, rubbing his back soothingly.  “That’s not your burden to bear.”

“It is now,” Jack replied.  “Whether or not I want it.  I have his memories inside me.  I have to help him.  He didn’t deserve what happened to him, and I’m the only one who can help him.”  Bunny frowned.

“Whoever he was in those memories, Jack, he’s not that person anymore.  He’s been Pitch for a very long time.”

“I still have to try,” Jack insisted.  He turned to North.  “A few months, you said?”

“If you are careful.  Your fear will make it grow.”

“Then I won’t be afraid,” Jack said simply.  “If I can make him understand, if I can get him to trust me, then I can show him the memories and he’ll remember who he was.  Would that stop it, do you think?”  North rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

“Is possible.  The tooth is linked to Pitch, after all.  If you could break its hold on him, it would lose its hold on you.”  Jack nodded.

“Then that’s what I’ll do.  I know I can do it this time.  Now I _know_ him.  I know how to talk to him and what to do.  I won’t make any mistakes this time.”

“You need to be careful, mate.  You can’t trust Pitch,” Bunny reminded him.

“I know that.  But if I can get him to trust me, then maybe I can get him to remember.”  The Pooka sighed, crossing his arms.

“We’re always here.  If you need help, if _anything_ goes wrong, you come straight to us, got it?”  Jack nodded.

“Yeah, I gotcha.”  Jack looked around for a moment, suddenly concerned.  “Where’s my staff?”

“Ah.  Is with Tooth,” North answered.  “I will be right back.”  He left the room again, and returned a few moments later with Tooth in tow.  She put his staff against the wall, and fluttered over to him.

“Oh, Jack.  I’m so sorry,” she cried.  He gave her a hug.

“It’s okay, Tooth.  It’s not your fault.  It was my choice, and I’ve got to live with it.”  Toothiana was far from consoled.

“I shouldn’t have let you see them.”

“No.  I asked you.  You couldn’t have stopped me, okay?  It was my choice, and now I’ve got to fix whatever is happening.”  She saw his hand, and gasped.

“Oh, Jack…”

“It’s gonna be okay, Tooth,” he reassured her.  “I’ve got this.  If I can get Pitch to remember, then this,” he waved his hand, “will all go away.”  Toothiana frowned.

“I hope so.  Jack, I can’t lose you.  _We_ can’t lose you.”  She hugged him again.  “You’re too important.”

“You’re not gonna lose me,” he insisted, warmed by her affections.  He pushed the covers off himself and wobbled to the floor.  He stumbled a bit, and grinned at his friends when they all jumped forward to catch him.  As he moved to retrieve his staff, he saw someone standing in the doorway.

“Sandy!” he exclaimed.  The little guardian looked distressed.  An image of Jack appeared over his head.

“I’m okay.”  Jack winced.  “Well, mostly.  I’ll _be_ okay, though.”  Sandy noticed the dark stain on Jack’s palm and a flurry of images flashed over his head, his hands waving about wildly and his eyes wide.  Jack gestured for him to calm down.

“There is fraction of Pitch’s tooth in Jack’s hand.  Is poisoning him,” North summarized, to Sandy’s horror.

“But!” Jack added, “I’m going to get Pitch to remember his past, and then I’ll be okay because the darkness is connected to Pitch and if he regains his memories the connection will be broken!”

“Or so we hope,” North finished, quietly.  Jack looked around at his friends’ distressed and troubled expressions.  _Don’t do this to me_ , he thought.  _How can I be brave if you don’t believe in me?_ He clenched his fists, steeling himself.  He could _do_ this.  He could succeed.  And he would _not_ be afraid.

“Okay.  How about this?” Jack said, getting their attention.  “I’m going to go look for Pitch.  I’m going to spend time with him and get him to trust me.  I don’t know how long that’s going to take, but I’ll come back here once a week so you guys don’t have to worry.  I’ll tell you how things are going, and we can keep tabs on this.”  He waved his injured hand again.  “Sound good?”  The guardians did not look thrilled.

“I don’t think you should go alone,” Bunny said.  Jack shook his head.  “None of you like Pitch, I get that.  I can’t say I like him either, and I certainly don’t trust him.  But this is something I have to do.  I made a choice, and now I have to follow through with that.  And I need to do it alone.”

“Do you want Baby Tooth to go with you, at least?”  Tooth asked him.  Baby Tooth sat on her shoulder, chattering sadly.  Jack smiled at her, but shook his head.

“Not this time.  This time I think it just needs to be Pitch and I.”

His friends nodded, resigned.

“We’re ALWAYS here for you, mate,” Bunny reminded him, putting a paw on the boy’s shoulder.  Jack smiled at him.

“I know.  And that means the world to me,” he said.  He picked up his staff and the lead box with Pitch’s tooth, waved goodbye, and headed out.  He and Pitch hadn’t exactly parted on good terms, but he hoped that the boogieman would still consider the Mountain Hall his new home.  It would make him easy to find, at least.

Floating alone on the wind, Jack found his thoughts drifting back to what he had seen inside the tooth (now tucked safely into the pocket of his hoodie).

“Seraphina,” he murmured to himself, and felt a pang of sadness.  What had become of her when her father was consumed by the darkness?  What had become of the Golden Age?  And how did the Man in the Moon come into all of this?  There were still so many unanswered questions, and Jack wanted those answers desperately.

To find them, he would have to dig.

And time was running out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the next chapter I am boosting the rating up to M, not because of any sexual content but because of some dark and fairly disturbing imagery that is really only going to continue as the story keeps going.


	8. Feather and Scale

In the darkness of the Mountain Hall, Pitch seethed.  His rage distorted the space around him.  Shadows twisted and moved in ways that shadows should not.  They had a life of their own in his presence.

With a scream of fury, Pitch lashed out at one of the ice columns, fracturing the smooth surface.  Cracks as fine as spider silk splintered up towards the ceiling.

How could he have been so foolish?  He’d let pride override caution, vanity trump reason!

When Jack Frost was with him, he felt strong again.  And he’d gone and thrown that all away!  For a quarrel!  For an inconsequential chance to tear at the principles for which the guardians stood.  He’d thought—foolishly, he’d thought—that he didn’t need the boy, that he could gather the Nightmares on his own.

_Ha._

The moment Pitch had left Jack behind, his control over the nightmare sand had crumbled.  The demon horses had kicked and bit at him with their monstrous fangs, and sent him reeling back into the shadows.  Pitch hid his weakness well behind a regal, collected façade.  He was confident that Jack thought him as capable of defending himself (and attacking) as before, though without the added power of the Nightmares.

He would be wrong.

The loss of Pitch’s believers and the year spent being tormented and picked apart by his own creations had left him a withered husk, and he would be a liar and a fool to try and convince himself otherwise.  He’d barely been able to flee the North Pole after being summoned before collapsing in the snow.  He’d lain there for three days, drifting in and out of consciousness.  Once he’d gathered enough strength to move and find a place dark enough, he’d brought himself to North America, only to collapse again—too winded to drag himself somewhere secluded.

More even than he hated being ignored, Pitch hated feeling weak.  There was a rage and resentment burning in him, the strength of which he had never felt before.  It lit a fire in his belly.  It made him hungry.

And his hunger frightened him.

It felt old and dangerous and dark.  Strange dreams passed through his mind in the blackness of his exhausted sleep.  Visions of dying stars and dismembered worlds.  Corpses floated in the vacuum of space and shadows blotted out every sun.  Light itself trembled before him.  The fear of the universe was intoxicating.  It made him feel _strong_.

He awoke from these dreams in horror, to find that in sleep he had changed.  His body had returned to its original shape soon enough—his limbs regained human size and length, his cloak shrank back into clothes—but that primal hunger remained.

Pitch knew that the veneer of his humanity had been filed down to dust, and he gathered it in his arms and smeared it on his skin.  It was all he could do to keep himself together.  He was losing control of the void inside him, and if he could not regain his strength, he knew it would consume him.

The Boogieman gripped his sides and loosed a howl of pain.  He could feel his organs shifting, his spine lengthening, and his bones cracking and reforming, all while needles pushed themselves out from under his skin.  On the ground, he screeched and writhed, spiralling farther and farther from himself.  Down, down into fire and darkness.

It was almost funny.  He became most frightening when he was most frightened.

How he hated this shape.  He hated how it tore reason and control from him.  Pitch required, above all else, control.  He lied, schemed, manipulated, seduced, and made false promises—all to get what he wanted and shackle those who opposed him under the yoke of his will.

He’d learned long ago that the only way to ensure that people give you what you want is if they fear you.  He would see the peoples of the Earth tremble and bow at his feet—would bask in their fear and their recognition and their reverence.  Maybe then the hunger would leave him be.

Or maybe not.

Pitch slashed at another one of the columns, sending shards of ice flying and leaving four long gouge-marks in the glassy surface.  Veins of black snaked further into the ice from where he had touched.  Corruption always seeks the heart.

He thrashed about, kicking and screaming like a child, though no child could have caused such a fearful sight.  Pitch stretched out on his belly, nails (that were now claws) dug into the stone and his feet (stretched, inhuman) scrabbled and scratched against the floor.  He moaned in pain, crying out softly and helpless.

The sound would have made a nightmare shudder, but there was no one to hear him here.  Pitch was alone with his fears and his pain, as he had always been and always would be.  Sobbing, he pressed his face against the stone.  Even his teeth were aching.

He longed to sink them into something—feel flesh tear and bone break and blood gush and fear _burst_ down his ravenous throat.  He screamed again, snapping his teeth mindlessly at the cold stone, arching and twisting like a thing possessed.

Conscience had almost completely slipped away from him when a light breeze brought the faintest trace of a familiar scent into the hall.  Pitch froze, breath ragged.  He inhaled deeply.  Yes, he knew that smell—cold and clean, as fresh as juniper and hemlock under a blanket of January snow.

_Jack Frost._

Pitch dragged himself back into the shadows with a heavy, quiet rustling sound.  No one could see him like this, least of all that _boy_ who should mean so little and yet was somehow so much.  He battled with the darkness inside in his heart and swallowed the hunger that threatened to consume all sense of self.  It would fail and he would triumph, as he somehow always did.  In the shadows he withered and became humanlike once more—mouth shrinking, teeth blunting, claws receding, skin retracting.  He bore his pain in silence.

Jack must never know the awful secrets he kept locked inside—the monstrous shapes and yet more monstrous hunger.  He knew if the boy found out, then all hope of alliance was truly lost, because Jack was far too good to let the dark take him knowingly.  If Jack was going to be tempted, Pitch must be especially clever about it.  So clever even Jack would not suspect, and that meant allowing some degree of honesty in his dealings, because Jack saw through his lies more readily than most.  He would not be tricked by falsehoods, and so he would have to be tricked with truths.

That Jack was coming back to him, even now, meant that on some level, the boy _wanted_ to be tricked.  Now the Boogieman knew that Jack would not leave him be or run away if Pitch lashed out.  If he wanted to see goodness in Pitch, then Pitch would let him see goodness.  Jack would not see that Pitch was, in reality, a mirror upon which he could project what he wished the boogieman to be. 

Behind that mirror was nothing but a deep, dark pit.  And Pitch knew it.

“Pitch?” Jack called out, weaving between the columns as the Boogieman watched him from the shadows high above.  A moment more.  He was not ready.  The blood beating in his ears was as loud as drums.  He drew in breath, tasting the air.  Jack smelled different than before.  The normally fresh and conifer-sharp scent of the boy was laced with something sweeter.  It smelled like weakness.

Pleased, Pitch slipped through the shadows and down onto the floor.

“I didn’t think you would come back,” he said.  Jack whipped around, almost jumping out of his skin in surprise.  He did not say anything, but simply stood there, staring.  The boy’s blue eyes were wide and filled with emotion.  Pity?  No, stronger.  Grief?  Why grief?  Was that even it?  Pitch couldn’t tell, but whatever it was, he didn’t like it.

“If you came here just to gawk at me, then leave,” he snapped.  Jack blinked, regaining himself.

“I’m sorry,” he said.  “I came back to apologize.”

“Apologize?”

“Yeah,” Jack said, looking away for a moment.  “For how I treated you when we were with that kid.  It wasn’t fair of me to blame you for doing what you were made to do.”  Pitch made a mental note of Jack’s use of the word “made.”

“Oh?  Well, apology accepted then!” Pitch sneered, voice dripping with sarcasm.  “I’ve been pining here all night, just waiting for you to excuse my actions.  Your disapproval wounded me so.  It’s not like I’ve spent my entire life being hated for being what I am.  Now that I have your apology, centuries of vilification and revilement have just melted away!”

“Stop it,” Jack said, hurt.  “I meant that.  I _am_ sorry, and I know that won’t change anything and I don’t expect it to, but it was something I needed to say to you.”  Pitch watched him carefully.  Jack seemed to be getting genuinely upset.

“I believe you,” Pitch said quietly.  Jack looked up, surprised and hopeful.  It was strange and amazing how one little word could make whole worlds of difference.  What was belief, anyway, when you boiled it down?  Acceptance?  Conviction?  Strength?

No.  Belief was power.  Pitch knew this well, and he had seen what could happen when an individual controlled the belief of others.  They would kill for him.  They would die for him.  There is nothing more terrifying and dangerous than a man on a holy mission with nothing to lose.  Reason and faith do not always work hand in hand.

“How has the Nightmare gathering been going?” Jack asked, tentatively.

“Not as well as when you were with me,” Pitch replied.  The look in his eyes told Jack that this was an invitation, but the winter spirit shook his head.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.  I know it’s what you have to do, but I don’t think I can help you with it.”  Oh, oh this was _good_.  Jack was already turning a blind eye to aspects of Pitch that he could not stomach.  Perhaps this would be even easier than he had imagined.

“If you’re not here to help me gather Nightmares, then why _are_ you here?”  Interestingly, Jack looked embarrassed.

“I thought, maybe, we could do something else.”  Pitch blinked.

“Something else?” he reiterated.

“Yeah.  Something non-work-related.”

“...why?”

“You said this wasn’t going to work if we didn’t trust each other, so I thought maybe we could do something that wouldn’t get us arguing over principles and stuff.”  Pitch tilted his head in a way that asked if Jack was going to continue.  “Like go to the movies,” he added eventually.

“The movies,” Pitch said, completely deadpan.  Jack looked annoyed.

“Are you a parrot or something?  You just keep repeating what I say.”

“I’m just trying to understand where this is going.  What do you mean by ‘this’?”  He made quotation signs in the air with his fingers.  Jack fidgeted awkwardly, twirling his staff in his hands.

“I mean you and me.  Us.”

“And what are we, exactly?”  Jack seemed to be getting more flustered by the moment.

“I was hoping we could be friends.”

How sweet; he really meant it.  Pitch could hardly contain his glee.

“Are you asking me out on a date?” he asked, slyly.  Jack blushed a faint purple colour.

“What?” he sputtered.  “No!  I just think we could do something, you know, _fun_ together.  That’s what friends do, after all.  They have fun.  And if there’s anything I’m good at, it’s that.”

“And what would you suggest we do?”  Jack shrugged.

“All sorts of things, I guess.  We could go ice skating, or have a snowball fight, or go sledding, or build snowmen, or—”

“Do I look like a child to you?” Pitch interrupted.

“Well, you suggest something then.”  The Boogieman looked thoughtful for a moment.

“I am rather fond of the theatre,” he admitted.  It was true.  There were many dark and tragic operas and plays that were always a treat to watch performed by a skilled cast.  The audience became so vulnerable.  It was always fun to incite a little discord into already impressionable minds.

“Let’s do that, then!”  Jack exclaimed, and then paused.  “I don’t think I’ve been to the theatre in a while.  Where should we go?  What should we see?”  He was starting to get excited.  Theatre!  Jack had loved going to the theatre during his years of solitude.  He could blend right into the crowd, pretend he was just the same as everyone else, and enjoy the show.  He never had to pay and he could sit wherever he wanted.  He enjoyed the comedies a lot.  A Midsummer Night’s Dream had been one of his favourites for a while.

“There’s usually something playing at the Bolshoi Theatre,” Pitch commented.  Jack gave him a quizzical look.  “Moscow,” he clarified.

“Ah.  When should we go?”

“Tonight is fine.”

“Oh.  Okay.  So, should I meet you there?” Jack asked, groping his way blindly through unmarked territory.

“Yes.  Six thirty, sharp.”

“Cool.  Cool.  Sounds good.  I’ll just, uh, I’ll be going then.”  Jack rocked back on his heels, to Pitch’s amusement.  He was like a fish out of water.  It was oddly endearing.

“Alright.”

“Yeah.  Going.”  He paused.  “Now.”

“So you keep saying.”

“Ahaha,” the boy laughed awkwardly.  “Bye.”

Jack shot from the cave with unexpected speed, leaving Pitch alone once more.  The Boogieman began to chuckle, which soon became full-blown, raucous laughter that rang and echoed in the empty cavern.  Oh, this was going to be _fun_.  Somehow, everything was falling into place.  Jack was wilful, yet vulnerable.  Hard as diamond, but strike him in the right place, and he would shatter apart.

But not yet, of course.

Pitch found himself curious.  Where would this lead?  Jack had professed to want friendship.  Pitch pondered on the meaning of the word.  He’d never had a friend before, and did not know what having one felt like or entailed—besides the obvious spending time with each other and enjoying one another’s company.  When they weren’t fighting (and sometimes even when they were) he found that he did enjoy Jack’s presence, if only because Jack paid attention to him.

As much as Pitch hated the world and nearly everyone in it, and had never done a selfless or genuinely kind thing in his life, he was still unbearably lonely.  Even when he’d been powerful and most could see him and cowered before him, he had still been lonely.  Hate and fear come together far more often than fear and reverence, or fear and love.  Pitch didn’t want to be hated.  He wanted respect.  He wanted recognition of his importance.  To instil fear was his role in this world, and he would remain true to that whatever humanity or the guardians thought of him.

But oh, how sweet it would be to be feared and adored in the same breath.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Super bonus points to anyone who understands the dual meaning of the chapter title!
> 
> Aaaand, this is about where the Black Ice starts, so prepare yourselves, people! This story's not gonna be Gen much longer. (I think there's been more Jack/Tooth than Jack/Pitch so far, hahaha. I can't help it. Everyone ships so well with everyone else. It just sort of happens.)


	9. Waltz

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M SO SORRY IT TOOK ME SIX MONTHS TO UPDATE. YOU GUYS ARE THE BEST AND I AM A BUTT. You guys have Lynn_StarDragon to thank for reminding me that I still have an obligation to this story and that I should get my ass in gear and work on it again. And I'm sorry if this chapter is a little wonky, it's probably gonna take me a couple chapters to get back into the swing of things, but I swear I'm back now and I'm gonna update this story at least weekly. ENJOY THE THEATER DATE.

Jack paced nervously across the massive, sloped roof of the Bolshoi theatre.  It was six thirty, sharp, just as they had decided.  The setting sun bathed the marble building in a rich red glow, but Pitch was nowhere to be seen.

“Maybe I got it wrong,” Jack muttered to himself.  “Maybe he meant tomorrow.  Is it the right time?  Which way do time zones go again?  Argh.”  He knocked his staff against the tiles in frustration just as a long shadow stretched across the roof of the building from where the sun could no longer reach.

“I do hope you’ll excuse my lateness,” Pitch said as he emerged from the shadows like a man rising out of the water, causing Jack to jump a little in surprise.  “Sunset was a few minutes later than I had anticipated.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Jack assured him, trying to hide his nervousness.  Pitch grinned knowingly at him.

“Shall we go inside?”  He asked, and goodness he had a smooth voice.  Funny, Jack had never really noticed before, perhaps because he always had more pressing things on his mind.  Now it was different; he had time to look and listen, and really take note of Pitch’s qualities and mannerisms.

“Uh, yes,” he managed to stutter out, forgetting for a moment what was going on.  “Yes.”

The two made their way off the roof and to the main entrance, Jack with a gentle leap and Pitch by melting into the roof again and re-emerging in the shadow of the doorway.

“So, what exactly are we seeing?” Jack asked as the two of them walked into the building, passing through the crowds bustling of people like phantoms.

“Swan Lake.”

“A ballet?”

“Yes.  Is there a problem?”

“No, no.  I just, didn’t think you’d be into that kind of thing,” Jack answered hastily.  Pitch narrowed his eyes.

“And what is that supposed to mean, precisely?”

“Err.”

“What kind of thing did you expect me to be ‘into’?”  Jack looked down at his feet for a moment.

“I dunno,” he said, “I guess every time I tried to imagine you at the theatre you were always seeing _The_ _Crucible_.”  Pitch looked surprised for a moment, and then a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.  He started to laugh, low at first, then with growing volume.  Jack felt sheepish.

“Hey, stop laughing!”  But Pitch did not.  Though they could not hear him per say, the people around the two beings began to feel strangely uncomfortable.  The laughter eventually subsided and Pitch wiped a tear of mirth from the corner of his eye.

“You really thought that every time I went to the theatre it was to see _The Crucible_?” he asked incredulously, chuckling again.  Jack flushed lavender with embarrassment.

“Well, no.  Obviously.  It just seemed appropriate.”

“A play about the witch hunts seemed appropriate.  Well, I can’t deny that, but I was certainly around to see plays long before Arthur Miller put pen to paper.”

“Well what plays do you like?”  Jack asked.  Pitch paused thoughtfully.

“I’m rather fond of Goethe’s _Faust_.  _Salome_ , too.  Oh!  Wagner’s _Ring of the Nibelung_.  A classic.”

“I think I’ve seen that one.  Longest performance I’ve ever been to in my entire life.  Horned helmets? Lots of, err, shrieking?”  The winter spirit suggested.

“That would be the one.  I’m impressed, Jack.  I didn’t realize you were quite so cultured.”  Jack glared playfully at him.

“What?  Did you think I spent all my time pestering children and rolling around in the snow?”

“I suppose we all have our misconceptions,” Pitch murmured as the two of them stepped beneath the archway into the main theatre.  Jack’s mouth made a perfect circle of awe as he stared into the massive chamber.  People flowed around them and into their seats.

“Shall we find our seats?” Pitch asked, shaking Jack from his reverie.

“Uh, yeah.  Though, I don’t want to sit where someone else might be planning on sitting.  Two empty chairs might cause a bit of a commotion.”  He looked around, and then up.  “How about we sit up there?”

“On the arch?”

“Yeah!  We’ll have a good view, and we won’t be in anyone’s way.”  Pitch shrugged.

“Whatever you want.”

The two of them made their way up to sit on the edge of the archway into the theatre.  Jack put his staff behind him and swung his legs excitedly as he watched the people pass below him and slowly fill up the amphitheatre.  Pitch sat calmly beside him, a portrait of composure.

“When does it start?”  Jack asked.

“About twenty minutes.”

“Oh.  Have you seen it before?”

“Many times.”

“Here?”

“A few.”

“I haven’t.”

“Then you shall be in for a treat.  Do you know the story?”

“Roughly.  Girl turns into a swan and falls in love with the prince, then he falls in love with a girl who looks like her but is evil?”

“That is the gist of it, I suppose.  The princess is Odette, her double is Odile.  But I won’t spoil the story for you.”

“Okay,” Jack acquiesced.  The two sat in silence for a time, and then the lights dimmed as the play began.

The setting was a regal ballroom; in the centre of the stage stood a man in white.  He leaped and pranced about the stage to the bright sound of the orchestra until the last of the curtains lifted to reveal a whole cast of dancers.  The central man paced about the stage languidly as groups of dancers waltzed around him to the sound of the music.  Jack enjoyed the upbeat tune of the orchestra, and watched with interest as the dancers moved about, following the man in white as he strode to the front of the stage in some kind of elaborate ceremony.  Jack leaned in towards Pitch.

“What’s happening?”

“Do you want me to explain the story as it goes?”

“If it’s not too much trouble,” Jack asked, a bit embarrassed.  It was so strange, sitting here with Pitch, watching a pleasant performance to the lyrical sound of the music.  The boogieman seemed so calm and unthreatening.  It was… nice.

“The setting is an old German castle and the man in white is the prince Siegfried,” Pitch whispered in Jack’s ear as the young guardian continued to watch the performance.  “The ball is his coming of age ceremony.  See the girls following him, trying to get his attention?”  Jack could indeed see the group of girls, all lovely and in brightly coloured dresses, following after Siegfried or dancing in front of him.

“Yeah, I see them.”

“The prince is unmarried and each of them wishes to be his bride, but Siegfried does not wish to marry for politics or status.  He dreams of a pure and ideal love.”  Jack watched Siegfried dance across the stage, absorbed in his own world.  The dance became more and more fervent until with a crescendo, the stage went dark and the other dancers vanished, leaving Siegfried alone in a single shaft of pale light.  The music became dark and mysterious, and Jack felt a chill run down his spine as another dancer appeared behind Siegfried, dressed in black and hard to see in the dim light.  There was something wholly sinister about this other figure.  He moved behind Siegfried like a shadow, at times mimicking his movements perfectly, and then suddenly breaking away and pulling at Siegfried with his hands, as if controlling him.  A dark and evil-looking crown sat atop his brow.

“Who is that?” Jack whispered.  Pitch leaned in to Jack’s ear, neither of them taking their eyes from the performance.

“He is the villain of the play, the Evil Genius, or Fate itself.  Sometimes called the sorcerer Von Rothbart.”  Jack watched the performance, mesmerized.  The dark figure had a strange and sinister allure, partly for his mystery, partly for his control over the unsuspecting prince.  As the dance began more heated, the dark figure vanished, and Siegfried found himself in a dark forest.

At the back of the stage, a group of women in white emerged.  _The swans_ , Jack thought.  As they waltzed about, Siegfried moved among them searchingly.  After a time they disappeared into the shadows, to be replaced by a single swan maiden who could be no one except Odette.  She danced gracefully and cautiously while Siegfried danced apart from her, entranced.  After several more appearances of the dark Fate dancer as well as the other swan maidens, Siegfried and Odette eventually came together and Pitch explained to Jack that the two had fallen in love, and that Siegfried had sworn to Odette that he would love her and be faithful to her forever.  Odette danced for a time alone, and then the curtain fell for the second act.

The scene was once again the castle ballroom.

“Siegfried’s mother, the princess, wishes him to marry and has gathered potential brides for the prince to choose, but he can think of no one but Odette,” Pitch explained as the performance continued.  Each potential bride danced her part, and as Siegfried passed over them all, the stage suddenly went dark.  Fate entered the stage accompanied by a ballerina in black, whom the prince was instantly entranced by.

“The dancer in black is not Odette, but a dark conjuration in her likeness created by the Evil Genius to trick Siegfried into breaking his vow.”

_How horrible_ , Jack thought, as he watched Siegfried fall in love with another woman, and imagined the cursed Odette back at her lake, her chance at love taken from her cruelly and without reason.  He watched the prince dance with the imposter with a sinking feeling.  He realized he did not know how this story ended.

“Convinced that Odile is the woman he fell in love with at the lake, Siegfried announces that he will make the woman before him his bride, failing Fate’s test of his loyalty and devotion.”

The stage went dark again and the true Odette appeared, blocked from Siegfried’s path by Odile.  Before he could reach her she was gone.  The final scenes of the ballet were, for Jack, dark and frantic and mournful.  Odette and Siegfried danced forever separated by the black swans or Fate himself, and when they finally came together, their expressions were pained, and they collapsed to the floor together as Fate loomed over them and the curtains fell.

The applause began and the dancers came back out to bow, but Jack did not clap.  The performance had been beautiful and spellbinding, but it left him with a sense of heartache.  He understood loneliness far too well to come away from it with anything else.  A gentle touch on his shoulder shook him from his thoughts, and he turned to see Pitch’s concerned expression.

“Are you alright, Jack?” he asked, and Jack wondered if the concern in his eyes was genuine.

“Ah, yeah,” Jack said, trying to look upbeat but coming off more as wistful.  “I just didn’t realize it had such a sad ending.”

“Not all performances do, but I believe the story is best this way.  Shall we go?”  Pitch got to his feet, and Jack followed after him.

“Why do you say that?  Not a believer in true love or happy endings?”

“The story does not hold as much weight if it ends happily,” Pitch replied, offering his hand to Jack.  Tentatively, Jack took it, and Pitch pulled them both into the shadows.  It was dark for only a moment, and Jack felt a strange chill wash over him, before he could feel wind on his face and see the lights of stars above them.  He looked down, and laughed.

“Are we on the Kremlin?”

“It offers a rather lovely view, doesn’t it?”

“Well, yeah I guess, but you could have told me you were gonna do that shadow thing.”

“What would be the fun in that?”  Jack smiled.

“You have a point.”  He sat down on the tiled roof and looked out across the twinkling city.  He felt Pitch sit down beside him, and was once again struck by the oddness of the situation.  The two of them, guardian and nightmare king, going to the ballet and then enjoying the night-time cityscape, still delightfully cool for spring.  He glanced over at Pitch quickly, but the other being’s gaze was elsewhere, far over the rooftops and out towards the horizon.  Jack clenched his injured hand, feeling the still-unhealed wound in his palm with the tip of his finger.  He was not sure how he would get Pitch to remember who he was when it seemed that he had so wholly forgotten who he had been.  Pitch did not seem capable of love, which is not the same as having sentiments for someone or something.  The darkness Jack knew lurked inside him was singular and suffocating.

Yet, it had not all been dark in his memories.

The love Kozmotis had felt for his daughter was a force as strong as the howling winter or the ocean’s tides.  It was soft like water, but relentless, powerful, and unceasing.  In Pitch’s memories it had filled him up and given him strength.  He could still feel the glow of it inside him, pushing him forward, instilling in him the conviction that somewhere, under all that loneliness and anger and fear, Pitch was still the man he once had been.

Jack wondered, not for the last time, what it would be like to be loved so fiercely and completely.

“What did you think of the show?”  Pitch asked quietly.  Jack looked up again to see that the boogieman was watching him.

“It was beautiful.  It was.  But the end… they committed suicide, didn’t they?  Rather than marry Odile and leave Odette cursed, he chose to die with her.”

“Yes,” Pitch said.  “It was the only way to break Fate’s curse, once Siegfried broke his vow to Odette by promising himself to Odile.”  Jack frowned.

“It wasn’t fair.  If Odile was conjured in Odette’s likeness, how could he have known?  It was a trick, and dirty one at that.”

“It was a test, to see if Siegfried really loved Odette as he promised her he did.  And he failed.”

“But he died for her rather than marry someone else.  To do that he must have cared for her,” Jack insisted.  Pitch rolled his eyes.

“Siegfried is a fool.  A noble one, but a fool nonetheless.  He is naïve and impressionable.  Unrealistic.  Shallow.  A dreamer.  Through his manipulations, Fate reveals his fatal flaws.  The prince dooms himself in the end.”

“But why curse Odette in the first place?” Jack pressed.  “Why purposely lead Siegfried to her, and then do everything in his power to keep them apart?”

“Because fate is cruel and unequal,” Pitch said harshly.  “We do not choose our lots in life.  They are assigned to us, and though we may fight them, only more misery comes of that.  If Siegfried had chosen to marry Odile, he would have lived, and so would Odette.  She would have been a swan, and he would have been married to another, but life would have continued.  The lover’s suicide is a foolish, romantic notion.”  Jack frowned, thinking over Pitch’s words.

“That may be what the ballet is about, but I don’t believe that’s true.”

“Hmm?”

“What you said about fate, and fighting it.  Our choices make us.  We’re not led.  We may not know where we’re going, but we at least choose where we go.”

“As someone who had their fate chosen for them, and their ability to make that choice taken from them, how can you say such a thing and believe it?”  Pitch asked.

“Because I did have a choice,” Jack answered, realizing as he spoke that what he was saying was true.  “Before I lost my memories, before I became Jack Frost, the moon asked if I wanted life again, and I said yes.  I may not have remembered, and I may not have known just what that life would mean, but I had the choice to stay human and die in that pond, and I chose not to.  We always have a choice.”  Jack looked Pitch in the eyes, searching for something—some spark of recollection or understand—but he found only faint surprise and intrigue.

“Even in the worst of places, you find reasons to keep going.  You’re rather remarkable, Jack Frost, and rather irritating.”  Jack wasn’t sure if Pitch was being serious, or just teasing him.  He was going to go with teasing.

“Well we can’t all be doom and gloom.  I’m the guardian of _fun_ , after all.  You can make good things out of even the worst situations.  You just have to… look at it the right way.”

“Yes, through rose-coloured glasses,” Pitch said dismissively.  “Optimism is a delusion.”

“Aww, don’t be so grumpy.  Enough philosophy.  Next time, we’ll have to see a comedy or something,” Jack said.  Pitch looked faintly surprised.

“You would like to go again?”

“Yeah!  I mean, it was kind of a depressing story, but it was still a great performance and it was fun… going with you.”  Pitch smiled, and as he did so his whole face softened.  Jack felt his heart flutter.  He’d seen that face before, with eyes less clouded and skin less grey.  It had belonged to a man named Kozmotis Pitchiner.

“Well, you know where to find me.  You may choose our next venue.”  Pitch got to his feet.  “And while the evening has been delightful, I must return to my duties and so must you, I would imagine.”  Jack nodded.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Then I will see you later,” Pitch said, bowing slightly before melting into the shadows like spilled ink.  Jack remained sitting on the roof, looking out at the starry sky.  He was surprised Pitch was being so friendly and formal with him.  He’d expected more resistance and animosity.  So far, things were going well.  Better than well, in fact.  Jack felt oddly elated.  He could still see Pitch’s smile in his mind, so like that of Kozmotis, honest and open, not filled with hidden promises and cruel pleasures.  He wanted to see that smile again.  He wanted to see Pitch open up, to shed that bitterness and pessimism, to see beauty and joy and good things in the world.  He wanted Pitch to understand wonder, dreams, memory, and hope.

He wanted to save him and make him whole again, because this was not the ending he deserved, and fate or not, Jack would see that this tale did not end in tragedy.


End file.
